Photography Magazine

One of the most common complaints that amateur photographers have is ‘blurred’ images. ‘Blur’ can be a result of two kinds of errors. One would be an off-focus lens, and the other reason is usually camera shake. Both these errors are commonly referred to by the layman as blur.

As far as off-focus images go, it is usually a result of wrongly set focusing ring on a manual focus camera. If you use a auto focus camera, and still find some images off focus, it is probably because of the fact that your subject was off-center. Most auto focus mechanisms take the center-weighted approach, meaning – they focus on whatever subject is found at the center of the frame. If your subject is off-center, try this simple trick for error-free and in-focus images – get the subject into the center of your frame, and half-press the shutter. When you do this, the lens locks on to the subject, and usually a digital camera will alert you of the fact that the subject has been locked in focus, with a beep. Now, DO NOT take your finger off the shutter button. Keep it half-pressed as you re-compose your frame to the desired composition. Now, you can fire the shutter and get a in-focus image. Alternatively, if you are finding it difficult to half-press the shutter to get the focus lock, switch over to manual focus mode and us your judgment to get the subject sharp and clear. Finally, the smaller the aperture you use, the more of a range would you get into focus (more depth of field). The final technique mentioned (small apertures) should only be used at times when you are in an absolute hurry, since it does not always give you the perfect results you can expect with the former two techniques mentioned.

Camera shake is another cause for blurred images. This is quite different from the former reason of off-focus, and is simpler to understand and simpler to correct as well. Typically, you would get an image with camera shake when the shutter speed was set to too low a value, and the picture taken hand-held. There are more than one ways to correct camera shake. For one, maker sure that your shutter speed is at least the inverse of the focal length used. If you re using a 300mm setting on your lens, your shutter speed would need to be set to 1/300 of a second at least. Next, you should use a tripod whenever and wherever it is possible to do so. Where a tripod is unavailable, use a wall or a tree to rest against, as you fire the shutter. In the absence of such, use your knee to rest your hands on. Also, never jerk down the shutter release but instead, squeeze it gently till the trigger fires, much like a gun is fired! Finally, rest the camera against the side of your face for support. This is critical especially with the heavy digital-SLRs.

Ok - you’ve got your self a panoramic tripod head. You’ve aligned it to suit your camera-lens combination (it is a good idea to mark the position of the brackets so you do not have to go through the painful process of aligning your camera and lens every time you have to shoot a panorama). You’ve also found a great landscape or interior location to shoot your panorama. You mount your camera on the tripod using your panoramic tripod head. You shoot your 360 degree (or partial) panorama. Now comes the painful task of stitching together the images on  manual software, right? Wrong! There are dedicated software on the market for this very task. And what’s more, they also publish your images in variable formats. Once you have the shooting mastered, you need to invest into a good panoramic software. This technology was first introduced by Apple USA, on their VR WORX software that played panoramas on the Apple Quicktime player. Today there are a number of software available on the market to stitch and publish your work. We will not deal with any specific software here, but speak of the basic principles behind every one of them. Any panorama software involves the execution of three basic steps mentioned below.

The Shooting Stage

This involves positioning the camera and lens on a tripod with a panoramic head (as mentioned in earlier tutorials). Whatever the software you will be using to stitch together your images, it will never work (just as you will never be able to manually stitch the images either) unless the camera was positioned at the optic center of the lens while shooting. Different software will call for different shooting methods - some will ask for images of top, down, left, right, front and back, some will ask for panoramic images shot rotating the tripod head clockwise, etc. But remember, in every case the camera and lens first need to be mounted correctly on the tripod.

The Stitching Stage

Now ends the hard work and now begins the fun! When you have photographed the required images, you load them on to the panorama software and click away. Usually the stitching is completely automated while you sit back and relax.

The Publishing Stage

Next you will need to publish your panorama… you could choose to publish it as a jpg for print format. On the other hand you could choose to publish it on the web, so as to make an interactive panorama. Interactive panoramas invite a user to click and drag with the mouse so as to be able to ‘look’ this way or that, giving them the feeling of standing in a room or at a location and looking around. This has today become the norm to market real estate in most developed countries. To view the published Panoramas on a web page, the user usually needs a JAVA enabled computer or a FLASH player. But let us not get involved with the graphic design stage…