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02/16/2014 12:31:44 PM · #1 |
Hi guys. I've been doing a lot more landscape stuff recently and tried my first stitched panoramic today.
You can see it here... (click full size) - 
It's four shots, portrait orientated, and stitched in PS. I'm quite pleased with it but if anyone has any thoughts or tips on panos that would be great. I've got a ball head tripod but perhaps i should go for a panoramic head? That does seem to make sense. What sort of pano kits do you go with? |
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02/16/2014 01:20:49 PM · #2 |
It looks great to me. You might want to experiment with free stitching software (using the same source images) to see how the results (and work involved) compare with using Photoshop. I've used the free demo of AutoStitch for a long time, and lately I've been using the Photostitch program which came on the CD with my Canon camera.
If you want to do this a lot, a panning head would make sense, but to be honest about 75% of my panoramic landscapes are taken handheld; with practice they line up pretty well without too much waste to crop off (or clone-in; blank sky is not much of a problem), and as long as you don't have a large subject in the foreground parallax isn't too bad either.
With stitching software you can also gain height by making two passes, one with the horizon 1/4 of the way to the top, and another with it similarly near the bottom.
My Panoramas ... some recent examples taken under a variety of conditions:
  
  
 Showa uncropped stitching from handheld 5-frame series.
Message edited by author 2014-02-16 13:21:43. |
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02/16/2014 01:45:34 PM · #3 |
Looks very good. Seamless. I've experimented a lot in my gallery with presenting varying proportions of panos. Simply, the panos which sell best are the 3:1 proportion. Seems to be most eye-pleasing to people. But, those buyers are tourists in Colorado. Preferences will certainly vary around the world. However, the noted 3:1 preference has caused me to shoot for that shape, and/or crop down to same.
Some things I've learned to make better panos: Square your tripod. Square the tripod head with camera attached. Fine tune the camera level. Attempt to shoot with level perspective. Overlap images by 30%.
After converting to 8 bit TIFFS, I process source images In Photoshop Elements 12, I use Photomerge©Panorama. Usually, I select the cylindrical option.
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02/16/2014 05:00:11 PM · #4 |
I've only ever done a few, mostly handheld when I think about it. Which proves that software is awesome at lining this stuff up! Here's one from a couple of years ago:
15 vertical shots, stitched in cs5. |
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02/17/2014 08:26:42 AM · #5 |
I don't know what other people feel about it, but I find Microsoft ICE to be an excellent free panorama stitching program:
Microsoft ICE |
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02/17/2014 08:52:10 AM · #6 |
Beautiful work. I love the soft, pastel like colors. A beautiful pastoral scene.
As far as equipment goes... try this!! |
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02/17/2014 08:56:32 AM · #7 |
Originally posted by hahn23:
Looks very good. Seamless. I've experimented a lot in my gallery with presenting varying proportions of panos. Simply, the panos which sell best are the 3:1 proportion. Seems to be most eye-pleasing to people. But, those buyers are tourists in Colorado. Preferences will certainly vary around the world. However, the noted 3:1 preference has caused me to shoot for that shape, and/or crop down to same.
Some things I've learned to make better panos: Square your tripod. Square the tripod head with camera attached. Fine tune the camera level. Attempt to shoot with level perspective. Overlap images by 30%.
After converting to 8 bit TIFFS, I process source images In Photoshop Elements 12, I use Photomerge©Panorama. Usually, I select the cylindrical option.
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Excellent tips  hahn23. Do you do any raw processing to your images prior to tiff conversion? White balance, perspective correction, anything like that?
Message edited by author 2014-02-17 08:56:44. |
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02/17/2014 09:05:13 AM · #8 |
Originally posted by EL-ROI:
Originally posted by hahn23:
Looks very good. Seamless. I've experimented a lot in my gallery with presenting varying proportions of panos. Simply, the panos which sell best are the 3:1 proportion. Seems to be most eye-pleasing to people. But, those buyers are tourists in Colorado. Preferences will certainly vary around the world. However, the noted 3:1 preference has caused me to shoot for that shape, and/or crop down to same.
Some things I've learned to make better panos: Square your tripod. Square the tripod head with camera attached. Fine tune the camera level. Attempt to shoot with level perspective. Overlap images by 30%.
After converting to 8 bit TIFFS, I process source images In Photoshop Elements 12, I use Photomerge©Panorama. Usually, I select the cylindrical option.
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Excellent tips hahn23. Do you do any raw processing to your images prior to tiff conversion? White balance, perspective correction, anything like that? |
My images are captured in RAW. AWB seems to work. I do convert to 8 bit TIFFs before merge. Otherwise, I do not do any RAW processing (in Aperture) of the individual frames. |
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02/17/2014 01:56:50 PM · #9 |
I'd say that's a very nice stitching result, most especially for a first go! Ps does a really nice job of color matching, which helps a lot, and your scene does not contain subject matter which is too close for parallax to be a problem. It does look like the focal length was moderately long, which helps.
Welcome to the challenging world of pano stitching! There is much to learn, no end of challenges to surmount, but the results can be stunning.
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02/18/2014 07:53:05 AM · #10 |
Thanks for so much great help and input everyone. It's very much appreciated!
Paul, i haven't tried any other software yet but may in the future. PS-CS3 seems pretty good and accurate so far but i'll look around if i run into problems. As to handholding, i don't think the camera i'm using would be up to that job really. It has spectacular image quality at base and low ISO but quickly loses it after that. No image stabilisation either. It's pretty much an ISO 100 on a tripod kind of camera which is fine for this kind of thing.
Richard, fantastic help as always! Cheers for the 3:1 ratio tip. That's very interesting to know. I'm hoping to get a decent printer and start mounting (and hopefully selling) at some point so a consistent ratio, or couple of ratios, wit very good to examine. Excellent advice on squaring the tripod and overlapping by 30%. Also good to know you use the cylindrical option in PS. I'll experiment with that as i think i just used Auto on this one.
My workflow is using TIFFs into PS. Using these Sigma cameras is an added step as i have to use the clunky Sigma software to deal with the RAW files. I've pretty much always used auto white balance in the past with my Nikons but it's kind of rubbish with the Sigmas so i'm seeing what it's like when shooting. I'll do all other processing once the files are stitched and into Lightroom.
Thanks everyone else for encouraging words. I'm keen to get up the hills for some more once the weather becomes a bit more bearable! |
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04/16/2014 06:49:19 AM · #11 |
The panoramic view is beautiful and quite an elusive capture. Great work!
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