Capturing the stunning landscape through a wide lens or a digital camera still can’t depict how beautiful and magnificent the landscape is! The technique “How To Shoot A Panoramic Photo” isn’t difficult at all. It highly depends on the camera settings and composition of the frame.
This post gives you a comprehensive guide for panoramic photography techniques. It would be also a good starting point for you to learn How To Shoot A Panoramic Photo!
How To Shoot A Panoramic Photo
Step 1: Camera Settings
Lense
Shooting a panoramic photo doesn’t require you to equip a wide lens. More specifically, a standard lens between 18 and 35 mm is alright to capture a stunning panoramic photo. I personally use the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G lens for most of my panoramas.
Using a wide or ultra-wide lens in taking 360 degrees even causes distortion in the post-processing of panorama makers.
Lense Filter
It is advisable to remove all lens filters, especially circular polarizers to avoid any gradation.
ISO
ISO should be manually set. Either 100 or 200 works perfectly.
Manual Mode
The most important factors in creating an amazing panorama are consistency in any exposures you shoot. So, let select Manual Mode in order not to reset every time.
Aperture and Shutter Speed
Depending on the length of your lens, always try your best to put every detail, including the foreground into a frame. You should set your aperture to at least f/8, preferably f/10.
Next, please try to take different photos with various shutter speeds to get a perfect number of shutter speeds. It helps avoid brightness and darkness in some parts of your photos.
White Balance
It is also important to pre-set White Balance. Automatic White Balance causes a different tone in the exposures.
Step 2: Shooting Techniques
Hand-holding your camera is still possible as long as you keep the picture frame slightly different each exposure. If shooting hand-held, stand in one spot, keep your elbows close to your body, and rotate only the upper part of your body. Keeping the camera close to your head at all times. Imagine that your legs are a tripod and your upper body is a tripod head. This will minimize the effect of parallax on your images. However, tripods & a firmed trip head are highly recommended in order to minimize blurring caused by movement.
Then, let’s start with the starting point from the left side to the right side. Taking portrait/ vertical photos allows you to have more control over the overlap and the height of one frame.
The next step is to rotate the tripod head 5-10 degrees towards the endpoint, take another shot, rotate it another 5-10 degrees before taking a photo. Repeat this process until you’ve reached the endpoint.
Overlap between each exposure is from 1/3rd and 1/2 of a frame. Don’t keep the camera lens focused too close to the ground. Furthermore, please leave “dead space” for the up & bottom in one frame. Without the necessary dead space, the photo could look weird after being cropping.
Step 3: Post-Processing Panoramic Pictures
Lightroom and Photoshop are capable of stitching exposures. Before uploading different exposures into the editing software, please make sure that you adjust White Balance properly and consistently among exposures. It is unnecessary to edit the separating exposures. The software will handle the rest for you.
Besides, you can get supportion from other panorama makers to create sharpness for the panoramic pictures. The built-in control point finder in panorama makers is faster to determine center points through different exposures.
Tips For Shooting A Panoramic Photo
- Work out your composition and any settings.
- Avoid windy days.
- If you have moving objects like trees; and try and keep any large subjects in the distance to prevent parallax anomalies.
- Select the right composition.
Conclusion
I hope this post provides you enough information to shoot a panoramic photo. Alongside with technique about How To Shoot A Panoramic Photo, panorama makers are extremely important to create an amazing masterpiece. Panorama makers are efficient to create sharpness and vibrant color for a wide shot.
Choosing the best panorama makers and how to use them are the must-step to create a perfect shot. The informative post. Top 5 Most Popular Panorama Makers – From Basic To Advanced are good for you to grab, too. It gives you the top 5 most popular panorama makers. They are not only user-friendly interfaces but also produce stunning images.
Thank you for reading!
