dickparkans Loc: Arizona

I have taken panorama pictures before with success. I stitched the images together and the pictures turned out great. I tried a 2 layer pano image. The first layer was fine. It was an outside picture of trees and clouds. The camera was level and on a tripod. For the second layer, I just tilted the camera up. The 2nd layer would not stitch. Using a wide angle lens, the trees were leaning in different directions and wouldn't line up. What did I do wrong? What can I do different besides not use a wide angle lens? The enclosed image is of the bottom layer only. THANKS

PHRubin Loc: Nashville TN USA

Wide angle lenses are noted for giving non-parallel vertical lines when the camera is not pointed at the horizon. Trying to stitch such an image vertically with one with parallel vertical lines takes special handling.

dickparkans Loc: Arizona

Thanks. Should I try not using the wide angle and just taking more individual images and stitching them?

David in Dallas Loc: Dallas, Texas, USA

What are you using to stitch the photos? I think Autostitch might do the job. I've done some 2-row panoramas using that tool. The photos were all hand-held from the same spot. This one was made from 13 photos--7 in the bottom row and 6 in the upper:

Celebrity Theater by David Casteel, on Flickr

And Lightroom also does a pretty good job. I was able to make a vertical panorama using the first 2 shots attached to give the 3rd one. As you can see, one of the 2 contributing photos had vertical elements and the other had converging ones.

I don't use "layers"--no idea how to or why.

DanielB Loc: San Diego, Ca

I wouldn't use a wide angle lens due to the barreling you get at the edges and that will cause problems when you go to stitch the images together. Shoot in portrait not landscape and if you can get a pano bracket so your pivot point is in line with your sensor. Most Digital cameras will have a symbol (a circle with a line through it) that shows you where the censor is located inside the camera body. It will help to line up your pivot point with a bracket.

User ID

At your original scene, if you had shot at lesser angular changes for 5, 6, or more layers to stitch, for that very same total coverage, then your stitching program might do the job, although the tall trees would warp kinda similarly to the outer area of a fisheye image.

twowindsbear

Try again with your camera in 'portrait' orientation & take a few more frames, with greater overlap, perhaps as much as 50% overlap. Good luck!

David in Dallas Loc: Dallas, Texas, USA

I agree with Daniel. Stitching works better using only the middle portion of the photos, especially if they were taken with a wide-angle lens. Wide-angle shots have significant stretching of the elements at the edges (don't put females on the outside edges of groups when photographing with wide-angles! ).

Parallax can be an issue with panoramas, too. If there are elements near the camera, it is essential to not move the lens when making the series. (A tripod should make that easy.) Hand-held, I just keep the front of the lens in the same position as I rotate the camera behind it. If there is no foreground in the picture, I just rotate my body at the waist and keep the camera to my eye. Never would I try to do a panorama with the camera at arms length and rotating my body (as some do with their phone cameras, using the image as their viewfinder). I'm sure you aren't doing that, though.

Maybe you could post the photos you are working with, so we could see the problem better?

PHRubin Loc: Nashville TN USA

Panoramas work best stitching horizontally if using wide angles.

Cany143 Loc: SE Utah

As is often the case, there could be any number of issues --either in the capturing phase or in the processing phase-- that caused your problem, and could've/would've affected your intended result. Apart from your mentioning that you tilted the camera up, you didn't indicate how much, or how many separate exposures (and how much overlap you allowed between each) in either of your 'layers' [I'd suggest you think 'rows' rather than layers....], so we don't have a lot to go by.

Its not at all uncommon for me to use a w/a lens when shooting with the intent to make panos as you had, and have shot to include two or three horizontal rows intended to be stitched. That said, let's look at just a few of the variables:

Shot straight on, with the sensor plane set plumb and level, using a w/a lens its still best to shoot in the portrait orientation, and shoot to provide as much as a 50% overlap from frame to frame, left to right. And 'over-shoot', too, by which I mean you'll find it helpful to include more scene, not only in the first and last frames, but in the bottoms of the lower row and the tops of the upper row, than you might ultimately want. When you go to shoot your second row of frames, whether you tilt the camera up or down, keep in mind that you'll want to maintain that 50-ish% overlap rate relative to what you shot that makes up that first row. By doing so, the natural/normal 'distortion' (its not really distortion, its nothing more than the keystone-ing effect that's made more apparent by the use of a w/a lens shot off-axis, but it translates as a sort of distortion) will be less an issue when you go to stitch everything together in post.

And processing all these separate images uniformly is really key. Make sure you've applied any lens correction your software allows, and apply that --and any other tweaks you may have made to the first of your frames-- equally and uniformly to each of the remaining frames. Then, rather than stitching one row horizontally then stitching the second (or third) row, and trying to stitch these separate rows together after they've been separately made, stitch all of the images that make your rows together in a single process. Once the pano has thus been made, whatever keystoning that's occurred (w/a lens issue) can be compensated for fairly easily in any of several ways, the easiest of which is with the use of whatever transformation tools your software might provide (hence the suggestion you 'over-shoot' the scene). Once that's been done, crop away the planned-for over-coverage, left/right and top/bottom.

There's a whole lot more that could be said, and if you'd like more info, I'd be glad to try to help.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I use longer focal lengths and the camera in portrait orientation to minimize distortions like in your image.

The attached image is a five column, three row pano taken with a 45mm lens, stitiched in Ligtroom, then enhanced in Photoshop and On1.

(Download)

mikegreenwald Loc: Illinois

I agree with Gene. Best bet for panos is "normal" (50 mm for ff cameras) or near normal focal length lenses, 25% or more overlap on each side, and portrait mode. My largest involve more than thirty shots, sometimes all horizontal, occasionally a small group of verticals, and often more than one row. Lightroom works fine every time. I believe the key is consistency, and avoid wide angle lenses - the whole purpose of panorama shooting is to get more information into the space - wide angle lenses get a sider view at the expense of fine detail.

mikegreenwald Loc: Illinois

make that "wider" view, not "sider"

bkwaters

Wow - that is cool. I never thought to stitch to increase height.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

You have a nice result there, but panoramas can be tricky - depending on how particular you are.

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/
http://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/a/products-and-innovation/easy-panorama-mode.html
https://photographylife.com/panoramic-photography-howto
http://www.kolor.com/download
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ice/
http://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/how-to-capture-and-stitch-panoramas/
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ice/
http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-282385-1.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tGR-Q9Pkjc