How To Shoot A Panorama
With A DSLR
With great
controls comes great responsibilities. Unlike Point & Shoot users who often
have the benefit of a Panorama Assist mode, DSLR users have to control
everything themselves. This is more work, but allows for greater flexibility
while shooting images for a panorama.
The basic principle of
capturing a panorama is to ensure utmost consistency between images. This means
that focal-length, focus, aperture, ISO, shutter-speed, exposure, white-balance
and image parameters all have to match exactly. Other than focal-length, these
settings usually have both automatic and manual modes. The key is to lock each
setting before shooting. Let’s go over each one:
If you are using a prime
lens, then there is nothing to take care of for the focal-length. If you want
fewer shots, then zoom out as much as possible. If you zoom in though, more
shots will be required but the resulting panorama will have more resolution and
can be printed larger. For web use, it rarely matters.
Focus should be set to make sure your subject is entirely in
focus. If you are shooting a distant vista, then you can usually go to
infinity. Otherwise, you can maximize focus by setting your lens to its hyperfocal distance. Once focus is set, switch to manual (MF) mode. There is
usually a slider on the side of the lens or on the camera body next to the lens
mount for that.
There are two ways to lock
aperture, ISO and shutter-speed. One is to go to Manual mode and set each one
yourself. As a general rule, you want a small aperture without going beyond the
diffraction limit of your camera, so somewhere between F/11 and F/16 for a
recent DSLR. ISO should be kept as low as possible, particularly is shooting
from a tripod where camera shake is not an issue. Then, set the shutter-speed
to get the right exposure. Take some test shots from the brightest area of your
subjects to make sure nothing will be blown out.
The automatic way is to
point the camera at the brightest area in the scene and press the AE-L button
to lock exposure. Depending on your camera and how it is configured, you may
have to hold that button the whole time or press it once before and once after
all images for the panorama are taken.
White-balance is locked by
any setting other than Automatic. Ideally, you should use Custom White-Balance
which is available on all DSLRs. Kelvin or Preset WB work well too. Image
parameters are generally locked except for certain automatic features like
Adaptive D-Lighting (ADL) and Dynamic Range Optimizer (DRO) on Nikon and Sony
DSLRs, respectively. If your camera supports these, use the menu system to turn
them Off.
Once everything is locked
as instructed here, your DSLR is ready to capture images for a panorama. Just
make sure to keep the camera level and leave plenty of overlap between frames
while doing so.
More information on how to create a panorama photo is found at Neopanoramic including panorama
software and panoramic photography gear like heads, tripods and leveling bases.
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