Path: Travel > Panoramas
Panoramas
I am great lover of big photo panoramas. And doing these as DIY projects is not too difficult: all that's required is a reasonably good digital camera, some know-how and a bit of software. I use two programs for this purpose, ICE from Microsoft (this is a quick and easy one) and autostitch (a little more complex but quite powerful).
As for the know-how, the most important rules are:
- Keep the camera in one horizontal (or vertical) line, as far as possible and practicable. A tripod is not necessary but for those really wide (or high) panoramas it may help.
- Make sure there's enough overlap between the separate shots which will make up the panorama. I usually aim for at least 25% overlap, but especially for short focal lengths (ie wide angle shots) slightly more is even better.
- Try to produce even exposure levels. If the level of light changes gradually within four or five separate shots that's fine, but a big jump in brightness within just two shots will not produce the best results.
- Don't change zoom levels or your own position between shots.
- Leave enough background (sky etc) at the top and bottom (or left and right) on all shots to make sure that you will get an even panorama.
Here are three pages with some of my panoramas, the first two landscapes and more landscapes, the third with city views. More will follow.
$updated from: Panoramas.htxt Sat 18 Jan 2014 13:14:23 thomasl (By Thomas Lauer)$