Shooting Panorama
When you think of panoramic photography, the image of a horizontally long photograph comes to mind. Panorama is nothing new to the world of photography. Its been around for almost as long as the art of photography itself, but it is also true that this form of photography has evolved just like everything else. Let us get into the basics of panoramic photography.
Panorama was earlier done using an extra long bit of sheet film and a lens with more than average field of view. If you do not really know what that means, dont worry about it. Today you can make panoramic images with any film or digital camera, and digital does make things easier where image stitching is concerned. On that note, let us learn a little about image stitching which is the basis of panoramic photography. Try this for a start - place your camera on a tripod and shoot your first photograph as you normally would. Then, rotate the tripod head to the right and frame your second shot making sure that the two photographs overlap each other to about 25% at least. You could shoot a third and a fourth image as well. The resulting images would look something like this…
It is easy to see now, that the 3 images can simply be combined to make one panoramic imahe. But how do you actually ’stitch’ the images together? We shall get to the stitching options later. For this introductory exercise, let us simply make 3 prints and paste them on a hardboard or something similar, so it is understood what is required. Do not be put off if your first attempt does not immediately provide good results. One thing you need to keep in mind is to make sure your tripod head is aligned well. For this purpose, a tripos head with a spirit level would work well. It is possible to shoot a series of overlapping images hand held, with care - but it would never be perfect shooting this way. In any case, if you stitch your 3 or 4 images together by sticking them side by side so that the overlapping areas create a panoramic effect, you would have something like this as a result -
Do note that the images have been photographed vertically so that one has the maximum vertical field of view or coverage. We have the luxury to shoot as many images as needed to cover the horizontal axis, so let us always remember that the vertical axis is not being stitched, and so we shoot with the camera held (or mounted to the tripod) vertically. Go ahead and experiment with image stitching to get the feel of panoramic photography. Every photographer remembers the excitement on creating his or her first pano stitch. The images above have been photographed hand held. One can see where the stitch is not perfect, but this is probably what your first few stitches would turn out as. Try sticking your images on a black card to create exciting panoramic cityscapes and landscapes.
