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Hand held panorama tips photographing panoramas

by Tanya Puntti


Tips for photographing hand held panorama’s


A few weeks back I took a Sydney ferry ride across to beautiful Manly beach in Australia. It was my first visit and after a few quick shots, I soon realized the lighting was perfect for beach scapes. After admiring all the great panoramas I’d seen on Flickr, I thought it was time to try one myself. However, being on holidays and without a tripod, a hand held panorama was the only choice. Having said that, I was pleasantly surprised how it turned out and most importantly, I learned a few tricks along the way.



Example Photograph – Hand held panorama

Note: Click the thumbnail below to view the larger panorama photograph. It is best to have a fast Internet connection for viewing the larger image as dimensions are 4219 x 800 pixels.


panoramabeach.jpgThis panorama was created from a series of 8 photographs that were stitched together with Photoshop CS3. If you have Photoshop CS3 you can create panorama’s by opening File / Automate / Photomerge. If you’re lucky, you might also have panorama software with the CD’s that came with your camera. For example, if you purchased a Canon camera, it may have been boxed with a copy of Canon’s PhotoStitch software.


Tips for photographing images that will be used for creating panorama’s

Listed below are quick tips, useful for photographers who want to create panorama images.

  • Use a wide angle lens, zoomed out ie at the lowest mm length, for example 17mm.
  • Manually expose the first photograph, then keep that exposure locked for the others.
  • Ensure sufficient overlap between photo’s, 20-30% is good.
  • If you can, try not to get any one person in multiple photographs. If you look at the larger image of the example photograph above of Manly Beach, you may have noticed a woman holding a baby showing up twice. This is due to me capturing her in more than one frame. Where as what I should have done, is waited until she was further up the beach before taking the second shot.
  • When hand holding the camera like I did in the Manly photograph, it’s a good idea to take two shots of each frame in case one isn’t as sharp as the others.

Photographing panorama’s is a style I am intending on experimenting with more in the near future. If you have any tips to share, feel free to leave them along with your comments :)

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{ 1 comment }

Chacchet May 25, 2009 at 1:58 pm

I love to create panorama photos, but I have a problem about horizontal straight line : they arched like to be take with a fish-eye lens. How can I avoid this ?
Hello Chacchet,
It’s hard to fully help you with your problem without knowing a little more about how you photograph and compile your panorama photographs. The only way to take away the fish-eye lens arch would be to take the first photo, then physically move the camera horizontally along the scenery, into position for the next shot and so on. For many photographers this isn’t ideal, hence the arch appearing in the majority of panorama shots.
Kind Regards.
Tanya.

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