hogesinwa Loc: Dalyellup Western Australia

I mostly take landscapes, with some city shots. If I take a people photo, it’s usually for a particular reason like locating a person on a date for reference, like family at say Xmas.
So mostly outdoors stuff.

Something that impresses the daylights out of me is broad sweeping vistas like in Panoramas. I try to take these and to make them striking. I use Adobe to stitch them all together. So far, I don’t have any that I would call presentable as I’ve been experimenting with ways of holding the camera etc.

I have a good tripod, a Fancier, very stable and reasonably heavy with a Fancier BH-02 ballhead. The plate can be moved forward-and-back about ¾” so I can move the camera back to put the focal point as the fulcrum and minimise that bowing effect you get as the panorama turns. After playing with the tripod, I have discovered how to turn it vertical, which is essential for panoramas I am told.
So, is the fact that I can turn the ballhead vertical, and move the plate back a bit enough?

Something is telling me I should have a full-frame camera to do this. It just so happens that I am about to make a major change to the style of my retirement income and can organise to make some of it spare to buy another camera if I choose to. I just last week bought another lens, a Tamron 18-400 and will probably have that on the camera mostly. I also have a Canon 50mm, a Tamron 10-24, a Tamron 90, a Tamron 150-600 and a Tamron 16-300. I gave my other lenses and my Rebel to my daughter.

To those who take panoramas, do you use a full-frame?

Do you use something called an “L” bracket to hold the camera? I’ve seen these in magazines but don’t know much about them.

I know about that site where you compare cameras from a link on here so I can compare a 5D to a 6D etc and I guess to a Sony Mirrorless or any other full frame and I will use that.
Thanks for any advice.

IDguy Loc: Idaho

You don’t need a full frame camera to create great panoramas. You need a good method and practice.

It looks like you have the right idea on how to rotate the camera. Doing it with a ballhead is difficult.

You need to be sure you lock focus and exposure for the multiple images. You need to ensure sufficient overlap.

hogesinwa Loc: Dalyellup Western Australia

Thank you. I get the lock focus and exposure (found that out!)

What should I do to rotate if not use the ballhead I have? Something else?

(Disappointed in your comment that I don't need a full frame for panoramas. There goes Excuse #1 and I was counting on that one. Will have to dream up something else now.)

Cany143 Loc: SE Utah

I make panoramas fairly often. I shoot these with whichever camera or system I happened to bring, whether its 24mp full frame, 24mp crop sensor, or 16mp crop sensor. I'll use whatever lens the overall scene I plan to stitch requires, keeping dof, spatial compression, individual lens characteristics, etc in mind. If I'm carrying a tripod, I'll use it; if I don't (which is much of the time) I simply hand hold. I've shot as few as two frames or as many as 20+, either in single 'rows' side-to-side, or sometimes two or three rows side to side; whatever is required to get what I ultimately plan to finally merge together into a single image. In effect, whatever it takes. I use a tripod when possible, but more often than not, for me, carrying a tripod is not practical, so I hand hold. Either way, sure, its best to keep the basics in mind: maintain consistent exposure across all frames, pan absolutely (or as 'absolutely' as you can) horizontally, and overlap frames appropriately. I'm sure there are those who'll spend the time to do the math down to the tenth of a degree, but I've simply found that having shot to make panos times enough to be fairly practiced at it, its pretty uncommon for me not to arrive at results that are perfectly adequate. More often than not, individual exposures are shot in the portrait orientation, less often I'll hold the camera normally, in its 'landscape' orientation; neither orientation is better than the other, the choice is simply dependent on what in the scene has been chosen to include and what is not.

That I happen to use Nikon and Fujifilm bodies/lenses is irrelevant. If I used Canons or Panasonics or Pentaxes, nothing would change for me from a shooting or processing point of view. Its not uncommon for me to end up with 12 or 16 bit .dng files a couple of gigabytes or more, and those might measure 60 or more inches across at 300 dpi. These, of course, get reduced in size and/or bit depth as needed. Whatever camera or system you choose is up to you, but sensor size bears little to not at all to making multi-stitched-image panoramic images.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Crop sensor, full frame makes zero difference for Panoramas. I use currently shoot with a Nikon D850, but took excellant panos with a D7100 which is crop sensor. What is important is technique, equipment and stability.

Shooting Panos is best in portrait format, which gives you the best aspect ratio for stitching later. WHen you swing your ball head over to position the camera vertically, the axis of rotation is off center, which will introduce stitching errors in the final result. An "L" bracket allows you to position the camera vertically right over the center of rotation, and is a lot easier to level. See link for typical "L" bracket:

https://www.amazon.com/Legged-Thing-QR11-LG-Universal-L-Bracket/dp/B073RS751Q/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1543471813&sr=8-3&keywords=3+legged+thing+l+bracket

The second most important tip is take time to level your tripod head. I have a specialized leveling base independant of my ball head for precise leveling. Get yourself one of those spirit levels that mount on the hot shoe and fiddle with your ball head until it is level in 2 axis. Remove any Polarizer filters from your lens, something else that will ruin a pano. Shoot at 100 - 125 mm; overuse of wide angle focal lengths will result in distant objects being too small to have an impact. You are going to stitch the images together later, so use a longer focal length.

Don't be afraid to position your tripod low, so the lens is 2 ft off the ground. You will get an interesting foreground this way.

Using Live View really helps with framing. So, after going through the leveling process frame your first shot. Before starting, I hold my hand in front of the lens, fingers pointing to the right, and take a single image, which lets me mark the starting point of the series. Looking at the image in Live view, divide the image into thirds. Take the first shot and rotate the camera so the portion of the image what was in the final third is not in the first. This gives you enough overlap to stitch correctly without errors.

Have fun.

An Oscar winning Cinematographer tole me to always shoot panos left to right, and the technique works. After your last image, do the hand thing again with the fingers pointing to the left. Back in front of your computer, this makes it easy to determine the start and end of a series.

par4fore Loc: Bay Shore N.Y.

Use an L-bracket and shot in portrait orientation.

scubadoc Loc: Sarasota, FL

If you can beg, borrow, rent, or buy a TS lens, it makes the process incredibly simple. You can shift the lens left, center, right without affecting the nodal point. You can do the shift in portrait or landscape orientation. You do need a tripod, though.

spraguead Loc: Boston, MA

Excellent!. Well thought out and well written as usual. thank you.

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

I do a lot of panos - some hand held, some with a tripod with a ball head (which is pretty easy, btw), and others with a full-blown multi row pano head.

I do not use short lenses - on a full frame camera I will use 45mm or longer - as long as 150mm.

If you look in the pano section on UHH you can see some of my work. Or you can look here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/gene_lugo/albums/72157687713807602

When using a ball head, all you have to do is first level tripod using a bubble level. then you use the ball head and either a level on the hot shoe, or the in-camera azimuth indicator to level the camera. From this point forward you only need to use the panning function on your ball head,leaving the ball nice and tight.

If you move the tripod to a new location - all you need to do is level the tripod again.

I have used everything from a cell phone to a D810 to get panos. The camera doesn't matter.

You don't have to level anything - which is hard to do anyway when shooting hand-held. You also don't need to use a 100mm lens. You will have an easier time stitching if you stay away from lenses that are wider than 35mm (or equivalent on smaller sensor cameras). Using an L bracket or holding the camera in portrait orientation will also yield images that are easier to stitch. The direction that you sweep is also not an issue - left-right or vice versa. All that matters is that you have enough overlap to allow the software to find common points to stitch.

Here is an article abou

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

Make sure your camera is level and level through out your pan cycle. I use photoshop to stitch my exposures together.

BillFeffer Loc: Adolphus, KY

I shot lots of panos both vertical and horizontal hand held on a recent trip to Texas and Utah national parks. LR 6.14 did a great stitching job even with some of the 10-24mm lens. I mostly take an extra shot to the left and right of the visualized scene to allow for composition adjustments.

FuzzyDan

Back in film days, I was taught to overlap panorama shots by 50%. Then, to minimize distortion, use only the center third of each frame. I've not done any panoramas with digital. How do editing programs handle stitching? Are they matched edge to edge, using as much of each frame as possible, or do they also crop off the outer edges? Or is the decision on how much of each frame to use one of the parameters you can decide? Pardon my ignorance, but I do very little editing these days, other than cropping, so I'm not up to speed on today's programs.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

I have used both DX & FX cameras for panorama but prefer FX

hogesinwa Loc: Dalyellup Western Australia

I use the hand thing, one at each end but I hadn't thought of pointing. Makes sense, great idea - would hate to be in a position where I wasn't quite sure what belonged with what when they are similar attempts..
Have ordered an L bracket on eBay.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Good advice so far, and here are some links -
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