cheineck Loc: Hobe Sound, FL

I didn't take it as personal. Sorry if it sounded so. Did I mention "Hand-held" again?...can't find it.

mikegreenwald Loc: Illinois

There is no question that a carefully leveled tripod and all manual settings left unchanged throughout the shooting portion of the panorama creation will lead to the most consistent high quality results. Nodal point correction is needed for nearby objects, but you can often get away without it for landscapes. Lenses in normal or long sizes for whatever camera you are using work well, but wide angle lenses may introduce distortions in many cases.

lbrandt79 Loc: League City, Tx.

You can shoot them handheld but you must shoot in manual to get a smooth set of seams in your pano, especially if the llighting is different across the pano. I have attached three, two were taken handheld and the third sunrise with a tripod. I took an average setting of the sunrise with the the colors etc. and then when panning the darker areas turned out pretty much the way the valley looked with the silhouettes etc. The other two were easier because of the lighting. Regards. All put together in Photoshop.

Monument Valley


Mormon Row and Tetons


Monument Valley Sunrise from Valley View Hotel

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Yes, I agree with the others answering here too, at least the few I read so far. Personally I'd use a high quality prime lens, say a 35 to 50mm prime and shoot 5 to 9 or more RAW shots. Use a pan head tripod not a ball head (I had to buy a second head at the last minute). Oh, and shoot on Manual everything (focus and exposure). If need be, Av mode or Manual only. Don't make a fake panorama by cropping an extreme wide angle lens image or two images. Overlap 25% to even 33%, I usually have shot in vertical or portrait format. Also if PS CS5, CS6, or CSCC stitches all your shots at once and creates an odd, none rectangular image try combining them two at a time and then combine those from the center one(s) first working alternately outward. It can give you more control and a larger usable image. You will still likely have to crop to a rectangle. There are a few advanced tricks to fill in empty space (research "Photoshop Content Aware". Also try adjusting all your images with Camera Raw before hand. The resultant panorama can be a huge file, over 1GB! And thus hard to work with or edit. Unless you are actually printing a mural, a 105-inch wide image file is useless over-kill, so reduce your physical size to say 24" at 300dpi and then save it as a PSD or TIFF file. Only go to JPG for publishing or printing.

You might also try for another project a Stitched image that is not a panorama per say but a similar array of say a 3 by 4 array or grid of images to make like an image shot with a larger format camera. You can get incredible detail.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Great Images Larry!

lbrandt79 Loc: League City, Tx.

Thanks for the comment, and never thought of combining them two at a time, just learned something I never thought of, thanks.
Also, you are correct, Manual is the only way to shoot, some scenes however where the light is constant across I can see where you can shoot aperture priority but with Manual you will not see the seams in the final product. I never take the chance to not shoot in manual.

BboH Loc: s of 2/21, Ellicott City, MD

Some things about settings:
...all manual - do NOT change between images - same settings for all images in the series
...set your focus for the first image - again, DO NOT change it for following images.
...decide on what f stop you want and then take several shots over the span of your pano - set the shutter for the brightest and the darkest areas and then set an average for use over the entire pano. Tweek the average and then don't change between images.

RE paralex - as mdorn said parallax is an issue with near and far objects in the same series - it shows up in the image overlaps. If you can't calibrate your tripod/camera/lens shoot hand-held. Set one foot in front, place and center your camera above that foot and rotate around that foot - each image shot square-on.
Again, shoot in portrait aspect.
If you need to shoot from low to high, same overlap with the above and below images. If you have multiple images in a row - shoot from the bottom to the top, ALL rows from left to right.
The very first and very last image in the series should be your hand.

Albuqshutterbug Loc: Albuquerque NM

I have not seen anyone recommend this and I don't know if they would anyway.
Microsoft has a free program called ICE.
Image Composite Editor that will do most of the work for you assuming you have solid photos to work with.
I agree, manual mode and do not change your exposure as you pan.
I have had good results with this program both hand held and tripod mount.
It's a quick and dirty solution that works rather well.
Attached is a 6 photo stitch using ICE from this weekend.
Its not picture perfect but it is very quick and easy to use.

Safford Arizona Storm Front

mdorn Loc: Portland, OR

Very nice Larry! :thumbup:

lbrandt79 Loc: League City, Tx.

Great shot, perfect example at to why you need to shoot Manual.

lbrandt79 Loc: League City, Tx.

Thanks

cheineck Loc: Hobe Sound, FL

None of the examples I posted here (look back a page or so) were taken using manual...what am I doing right, or wrong?

lbrandt79 Loc: League City, Tx.

First, those two pics were awesome.
I hope I did not criticize your work, the only thing I would say is that you can certainly not use Manual and get great Panoramic pics but do not believe you can get them if the lighting is different across the panoramic. Look at the Monument Valley pic I posted, it is exactly the way it was that morning, had I use Aperture priority with the difference in lighting there would be no way to stitch that scene. I think the two pics you submitted would allow you to shoot at an automatic setting such as AV. Regards

SteveR Loc: Michigan

Once the panorama is put together, is it possible to do p/p on it?

lbrandt79 Loc: League City, Tx.

Yes, flatten the image and you can adjust, hopefully you will not need to adjust it very much.