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Step 3Taking Pictures
Grab your digital camera, make sure you have a memory card and a fresh set of batteries, and find a good scene to make a panorama of. Taking panoramas isn't difficult, but there are a few simple things you can do to avoid common mistakes.
Make sure you're using your camera's manual or panorama mode. In order for your images to be stitched together properly, they need to be exposed exactly the same way, so that the every object will appear with the same color and brightness in all images. If you're using manual mode, make sure the sensitivity (ISO), shutter speed, aperture (F stop), white balance, and preferably focus, are the same for every image in your panorama. If your camera has a panorama mode, it should take care of this for you.
Using the flash is generally a bad idea for panoramas, since it will be difficult to get the illumination consistent and natural-looking across the entire set of pictures. If you don't have a lot of available light, then a tripod and slow shutter are your best option.
Most panoramas will have a very large dynamic range from darkness to bright light. In a typical outdoor scene you might have an object in direct sunlight (or the sun itself) on one side of the panorama, and a dark shadowed area 100ý away. Camera sensors generally have a fairly narrow dynamic range, so you'll have to make sure the exposure you pick won't create any completely white or completely black areas. The best solution to this problem is to use exposure blending: take two (or more) copies of the entire panorama at different exposures and combine them later into a single image, using only the well-exposed parts of each source image.
Now that your camera is configured correctly, start at one end of your scene and shoot the first image. Rotate the camera and continue taking pictures until you've captured all of the scene that you want. The rotate part is actually a little trickier than you might think at first: if you move the center of your lens's entrance pupil between shots you'll end up with parallax error. This means that objects in the foreground will shift relative to those in the background. A tripod is the best way to eliminate this, but you can manage without one if you're careful (don't do the obvious thing and hold the camera at arm's length while turn your whole body with your feet in place). See the diagram for an example of parallax.
Each pair of adjacent images needs to have some overlap to be able to find control points. Overlapping between 30% and 50% is usually sufficient, but if part of your scene doesn't have enough recognizable features, you may need to overlap more.
Try to keep the camera level across the entire panorama without moving up or down. If you have a tall structure that won't fit in a single image, take another row of images with the camera pointing up (or down) relative to the first row. Of course, panoramas don't always have to be just wide (in the horizontal dimension), they can be tall and wide (with several vertical steps) or just tall.
Make sure you're using your camera's manual or panorama mode. In order for your images to be stitched together properly, they need to be exposed exactly the same way, so that the every object will appear with the same color and brightness in all images. If you're using manual mode, make sure the sensitivity (ISO), shutter speed, aperture (F stop), white balance, and preferably focus, are the same for every image in your panorama. If your camera has a panorama mode, it should take care of this for you.
Using the flash is generally a bad idea for panoramas, since it will be difficult to get the illumination consistent and natural-looking across the entire set of pictures. If you don't have a lot of available light, then a tripod and slow shutter are your best option.
Most panoramas will have a very large dynamic range from darkness to bright light. In a typical outdoor scene you might have an object in direct sunlight (or the sun itself) on one side of the panorama, and a dark shadowed area 100ý away. Camera sensors generally have a fairly narrow dynamic range, so you'll have to make sure the exposure you pick won't create any completely white or completely black areas. The best solution to this problem is to use exposure blending: take two (or more) copies of the entire panorama at different exposures and combine them later into a single image, using only the well-exposed parts of each source image.
Now that your camera is configured correctly, start at one end of your scene and shoot the first image. Rotate the camera and continue taking pictures until you've captured all of the scene that you want. The rotate part is actually a little trickier than you might think at first: if you move the center of your lens's entrance pupil between shots you'll end up with parallax error. This means that objects in the foreground will shift relative to those in the background. A tripod is the best way to eliminate this, but you can manage without one if you're careful (don't do the obvious thing and hold the camera at arm's length while turn your whole body with your feet in place). See the diagram for an example of parallax.
Each pair of adjacent images needs to have some overlap to be able to find control points. Overlapping between 30% and 50% is usually sufficient, but if part of your scene doesn't have enough recognizable features, you may need to overlap more.
Try to keep the camera level across the entire panorama without moving up or down. If you have a tall structure that won't fit in a single image, take another row of images with the camera pointing up (or down) relative to the first row. Of course, panoramas don't always have to be just wide (in the horizontal dimension), they can be tall and wide (with several vertical steps) or just tall.
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