Shooting Hand held Panoramas

Step 5 Shooting the Scene

When shooting on a tripod with a panoramic head, you can easily calculate how many images you need to make up the scene. however when handholding I wouldn't bother trying to stick with a set number of shots. It is much better just to focus on maintaining a good overlap from shot to shot, and trying to move around the camera (and not your feet)

Start with the first frame and line up the focusing points with key features of the scene. Scan your eye to the right hand side of the screen and make a note of what features align with the right hand focusing point.
Take the photograph then moving your feet to rotate as much around the camera lens as possible, line up the features of the scene that were on the right of the viewfinder with the focusing points on the left of the scene.
Complete the round of photographs until the whole scene has been captured.
Repeat rounds of panoramas tilted up and tilted down.


The picture shows how you can use features of the scene to line things up as best as possible.
As you can see from the example in the picture I have decided to make life easier by investing in a grid type focusing screen. in stead of the standard focusing points it also shows a grid of horizontal and vertical lines whcih can be used to facilitate the lining up of frames.