Panoramic Shots

View of Boxhill, Surrey

While out walking the other day, I thought I'd try my hand at a panoramic shot. I'm not much of a landscape photographer, but I picked up a couple of tips from when I was down at the RPS course in bath from a fellow photographer. This is the result of my efforts, and for a first go I'm pretty pleased with the results. Here's how I did it - in a simple guide for other beginners like me. You can make any of the images in this tutorial larger by clicking on the image itself.

Firstly, before you shoot, do these 4 things:

1. Set your camera to manual focus. If you don't do this, as you pan your camera around or walk along, your camera will adjust its focus.
2. Set your camera to manual white balance. Again, if you don't do this, your camera will adjust the white balance as you walk along.
3. Set your camera to manual (as opposed to Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, etc)otherwise you will get a variable depth of field or shutter speed which will ruin your panorama.
4. Take a few test shots to make sure you are happy with your camera settings.

You are now ready to begin your panorama. Walk along in a straight line, taking photos of your chosen scene. Make sure that your shots overlap. Here are three of the 10 or so shots I used to create the panorama above, giving you an idea of the overlap necessary for good results. I reckon each frame should overlap the previous by about 50% in order to get a smooth stitch later on:

You may be able to get away with less, but taking more shots or using a smaller overlap certainly won't do you any harm. Once you have taken a series of shots, it's time to start editing. I used Adobe Photoshop CS3 for this shot, but there are other dedicated programs such as Hugin, Photomatix and PTgui. I haven't used them, so I would welcome any comments with other users' experiences.

Armed with a series of images, the next step in Photoshop is to go to File > Automate > Photomerge. This will bring up a box as below.

The left-hand column offers several panoramic options and corrections. In this case, I left mine to Automatic, meaning that Photoshop will try to reposition images to align them correctly, as well as make any basic perspective corrections to create a smooth final image. Select the photos you wish to add to your panorama by clicking Browse and then hold down CTRL as you select photos to select multiple images at once. You will return to the box above, with your selected files listed.

Now all that remains for you to do is click OK and wait for Photoshop to do the hard work!

After a couple of minutes - depending on how many images you are using and the power of your PC - you will end up with something like the image below. This example is only using the 3 images I have chosen from above - you will be using more than this for a real panorama.

There are several jagged edges where the photos did not quite line up properly. Don't worry about this - it's impossible to take a panorama without this happening.

All that remains for you to do is crop the final image, and your panorama is complete. It's such a simple technique when you know how, and will open up all sorts of photographic opportunities. Give it a try!