Panoramic Photo's

[jjeling]

I wanted to put this in the same thread as the image games but I figured there would not be many of these. Hopefully you guys can prove me wrong. Anyways, These are the only two panoramic shots I have ever composed. The one is our house in the middle of winter. I need to get back this spring, and next fall to try it again. The other one is in Canada on Rainy Lake where my father and I went on our fishing trip. Anyways, I hope these will not be the only two to get posted. I would really love to see some others if anyone else has them.

[dmagick]

Nice :D I take quite a few pano's (and have some more still to put together from a trip to New Zealand a couple of years ago).

Here's a couple of mine.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3047/2727709410_b8983dd38b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmagick/2727709410/)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2068/2238041023_47dda5e47b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmagick/2238041023/)

[Iguanasan]

I've only ever done one but I think I will try some more. This one is a 360 degree pano

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_8Q3edxpMqBs/SZa4uMuq8gI/AAAAAAAADoo/wkaFAM7F0fM/s800/pano.jpg (http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/qS3fmOolyWY06Fhs5M90tQ?feat=embedwebsite)

[mindforge]

I have never done a pano but I am going to try this week I think. How do I to it? I have heard that you cannot hand shoot it and that I need a special head for my tripod. I shoot people but I think it would be awesome to make a pano portrait or try and play with that kind of a shot.

[dmagick]

I've only ever done one but I think I will try some more. This one is a 360 degree pano


Nice :) How did you stitch it or what software did you use? The couple of times I tried a 360deg pano the software wouldn't handle it.

[Gem]

Here's one of Abu Dhabi when I was in the United Arab Emirates. (And done without tripod)

[dmagick]

I have never done a pano but I am going to try this week I think. How do I to it? I have heard that you cannot hand shoot it and that I need a special head for my tripod. I shoot people but I think it would be awesome to make a pano portrait or try and play with that kind of a shot.

There's a heap of info here - http://www.panoguide.com/howto/

I'll still give my basic tips anyway (someone please correct me if anything is wrong!).

- Use a tripod (makes rotating around a single point easier). I don't have a special panorama head, it's just a ball head.
- Only use a UV filter. If you use a circ. polarizer (or grad nd filter) you'll have a painful time trying to stitch it.
- Once you've worked out an exposure (you'll need to focus on one area to get a reading, but make sure it's ok for the rest of the scene), switch your camera to manual and set your exposure/shutter speed. Means it won't change throughout the whole set :)
- Use manual focus (same reason as above).
- Make sure you overlap your shots. Stitching software looks for common points between images when it puts it all together, overlapping your shots will make this work better.
- Shooting vertical is better. This is mainly so after it's all put together you can crop things the way you want. (also means more shots = bigger end result).

I sometimes bracket my shots to give me a little latitude but depends on the situation.

I think that's it :)

[kat]

These are great! I can't wait to try one too! Great tips!

[jjeling]

Yeah, these are great. Its good to see what else you guys have done. These are great things to try when you have the opportunity. dmagick sounds looks and sounds like he has it down. Those are some great tips. Nice job.

[Iguanasan]

Nice :) How did you stitch it or what software did you use? The couple of times I tried a 360deg pano the software wouldn't handle it.

I did a lot of hunting for stitching software and finally found this site:

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html

Note you have to buy one of the products that AutoStitch is built into if you plan to do this on a regular basis. I only tried the demo once. My PowerShot camera came with a disk with some pano software on it but I haven't tried it yet.

[dmagick]

Yeah, these are great. Its good to see what else you guys have done. These are great things to try when you have the opportunity. dmagick sounds looks and sounds like he has it down. Those are some great tips. Nice job.

Thanks :o

[dmagick]

Here's one of Abu Dhabi when I was in the United Arab Emirates. (And done without tripod)

Good job :) But I can see the stitches between the photos. This will happen if you don't use manual mode and keep the exposures the same between each one.

[Gem]

Now that you've pointed it out, I can see one stich. I'm pretty sure it was on Manual, don't really remember, but I've stopped shooting in Auto, Tv, and Av a while back.

So it's better not to keep exposure the same with each photo?

[dmagick]

Now that you've pointed it out, I can see one stich. I'm pretty sure it was on Manual, don't really remember, but I've stopped shooting in Auto, Tv, and Av a while back.

So it's better not to keep exposure the same with each photo?

No, you should keep the same exposure. I was just guessing it wasn't on manual - obviously I guessed wrong :) Not sure why it didn't blend well then.

[Barefoot]

Panos are fine, but they can’t take you around corners. Photosynth can! I was a little hesitant to download the software necessary to create and view, but I’m glad I did.

I haven’t built one yet, but I’ve viewed several and they are amazing. You can go around corners and into rooms and buildings. My hat is off to Microsoft, they finally got something right.

I’ll be using my FZ8 to build one soon so as not to wear out the DSLR on something like this. Quality isn’t as important as quantity on a project like this. The best ones are projects of over 300 images although there are some good one with less.

If you don’t mind adding another piece of software to your hard drive, I highly recommend it for the visual experience.

http://photosynth.net/Default.aspx

[Mad Aussie]

I've taken very few panorama's. Plenty of faux pano's that I made just by cropping as a panarama but few real ones.

Here's one I did do though. Can't remember how many shots I stitched, but knowing me it was about 4 at the most.

This is a shot of the farm where the Hobbit village scenes were filmed for The Lord of the Rings. For those who know the movie(s) they'll remember the tree at the beginning of the first movie where all the Hobbit party was happening. Well that's the 2nd tree from the right of frame by the lake in this photo.

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u104/Mad-Aussie/09%20photographyca/panarama1.jpg

[Iguanasan]

This is a shot of the farm where the Hobbit village scenes were filmed for The Lord of the Rings. For those who know the movie(s) they'll remember the tree at the beginning of the first movie where all the Hobbit party was happening. Well that's the 2nd tree from the right of frame by the lake in this photo.

Very cool! Yes, I remember the tree well!

[BlueX]

Here are 2 panos I shot at Subaru get-togethers I use to attend. The top one was stitched from 6 pictures and the bottom one was cropped from a single frame. Both shot with a Sony W7 p&s.

[jjeling]

haha, thats awesome. We have a group of people that get together at random places in the city as well. They are called the UT Tuners. The meet and hang out for about 30-45 minutes, they have a final desitnation already picked out, and when security shows up, they usually go get something to eat. Havent seen that many tuned suburus lined up before. Those are some nice cars.

[BlueX]

This one is of a freaky cloud formation. I just so happened to have my camera with me when I came out of the library and saw this. It almost looks solid enough to stand on. The shots were hand held and didn't line up perfectly like I would have wanted it. The front edge of the cloud (and the parking lot) supposed to be straight, not curved.

[Greg_Nuspel]

I'm going to a workshop (http://www.richard-berry.com/shop.php?cmd=itm&id=1088&c=244) in March for panoramic photography. I'm really taken by it. Long time ago I wanted to do panos but you needed a Circuit camera or similar if you wanted good seamless 360 photos.

[tirediron]

A few of my panos (http://www.johnsphotography.ca/Images/Panoramas/index.html) (You'll have to click on the thumbnails, for some reason the gallery software hosed the index page images). I love panoramic photography - I have literally hundreds of them.

[BlueX]

Even since I did my first pano, I was hooked. It's addictive. Those are some great panos Tirediron.

[tirediron]

Even since I did my first pano, I was hooked. It's addictive. Those are some great panos Tirediron.

Thanks!

[dmagick]

I'm going to a workshop (http://www.richard-berry.com/shop.php?cmd=itm&id=1088&c=244) in March for panoramic photography. I'm really taken by it. Long time ago I wanted to do panos but you needed a Circuit camera or similar if you wanted good seamless 360 photos.

Looks like fun! I've been debating about doing a photo worksohp but haven't decided which one to do.