Panoramas

This panorama was pieced together from four photographs

A panorama (adj. panoramic) is an ultra-wide photograph that is (normally) pieced together from multiple images. They provide a unique way to view scenery, landscapes or anything that’s really, really wide…

How To Take A Panorama

First off, to take a really good panorama you must use a tripod. Although a lot of compact cameras come with easy-to-use panorama functions, they’re rubbish compared to doing things the proper way. You’ve got to use a tripod to achieve the same angle all the way through the image (as much as is possible).

Set your camera to manual and try and get the settings to suit the entire subject for your panorama. You mustn’t change the settings at all for the entirety of the panorama, otherwise you’ll end up with each segment not matching the rest. What you could do is adjust your camera’s exposure etc. against the middle of your viewpoint and then move it from left to right, ensuring that the exposure meter doesn’t go too high or low from the optimum exposure.

Once you’re ready, take as many photos as are necessary and overlap each by about 20%. This will allow your computer software to accurately piece together the panorama.

Piecing Together The Panorama

When you first put together your images, the panorama often comes out bent

Although there are some dedicated software solutions for making panoramas, I highly recommend using Adobe Photoshop for the job. I won’t go into the details of how it’s done (right now), but I will mention that panoramas often come out bent (as above) due to it being almost impossible to get the vertical angle at 0 degrees, unless you have accurate levels.

Photoshop’s warp tool is excellent at correcting this problem. I might do an extension of this post at a later date that will go into the details of the procedure.

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