Best equipment for pano shots?
- Thread starter leeinla
- Start date
You are all set to go. Make sure the camera is level on the tripod and take overlapping shots as you turn it round the panorama. You don't even need a tripod if you have steady hands and its bright enough to allow a fast shutter speed. Then combine in Post Processing. Lightroom for example will do this for you with just a few clicks.
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Danno_RIP
Senior Member
If you have the Adobe Creative Cloud with Light Room and Photoshop you have all you need. You did not say what you have for post processing your shots, but Light Room has a a very simple method to stitch the shots together.
Good advice from the above posts, if you don't have lightroom or photoshop, you can download ICE (Image Composite Editor) for free.
Image Composite Editor - Microsoft Research
Image Composite Editor - Microsoft Research
Don Kuykendall_RIP
RIP :(
I never use a tripod when there is enough light out. Lightroom and Photoshop do a great job of lining up the shots. Shooting in portrait mode and shooting the extra frames helps since you are going to lose a little top and bottom when doing a pano. The latest version of Lightroom will fill in missing areas pretty good though.
I did use a tripod on this one since it was a night.
I did use a tripod on this one since it was a night.
BackdoorArts
Senior Member
There are handheld techniques that make shooting panos cleaner, and modern software is extremely good at both stitching and even perspective correction (I use LR for all my Pano stitching).
That said, if you're going to do really detailed pano work - where you're dealing with objects both near and far - then you need a decent tripod system that ensures that the camera and lens rotate at a single point so that you don't have the same window on both sides of a lamp post and other things to clean up. I have a Nodal Ninja 4 that I got on a good deal off eBay. Don't use it enough but I need to get cracking with it. You need to spend some time getting it set up - every body & lens combination has to be calibrated. But once you have that done it's just a matter of setting the head to the numbers matching the combination you're using. Zooms with internal movements can, in general, be calibrated once at the long end, if they change length when zooming then they need to be calibrated at each use.
That said, if you're going to do really detailed pano work - where you're dealing with objects both near and far - then you need a decent tripod system that ensures that the camera and lens rotate at a single point so that you don't have the same window on both sides of a lamp post and other things to clean up. I have a Nodal Ninja 4 that I got on a good deal off eBay. Don't use it enough but I need to get cracking with it. You need to spend some time getting it set up - every body & lens combination has to be calibrated. But once you have that done it's just a matter of setting the head to the numbers matching the combination you're using. Zooms with internal movements can, in general, be calibrated once at the long end, if they change length when zooming then they need to be calibrated at each use.
Whiskeyman
Senior Member
Jake, I was going to recommend a good pano-head for the tripod, and the Nodal Ninjas are very good. (I've not owned one, but have used one in a workshop before.) If you ever decide to get rid of yours, please let me know, as I have been seeking a NN4 for some time.
When I was doing panorama shots for the workshop, I used a Autostitch, a three-dimensional stitching program that allows one to join together photos both horizontally and vertically at the same time. I don't know if Photoshop or others will do this, but it was a nice feature to have.
WM
BackdoorArts
Senior Member
I'll likely hold onto this until cameras themselves make them obsolete.
I haven't gotten into really involved panos, but I'm itching to get into them. I just haven't had the opportunity to get somewhere where it makes the most sense. I have something i need to shoot this week that may lead me to see whether or not Lightroom can handle it. I actually find the Merge Panorama function in LR to be cleaner than the PS stitching.
Whiskeyman
Senior Member
I do them every-now-and-then, but I really enjoyed an HDR Panorama workshop I took here several years ago. One of the sites used for the workshop is: farbspiel photography - View. Learn. Connect. I looked a bit and didn't find the exact pages that were used, but there are some selections in it that I might find worthy of watching.
I'm looking forward to seeing some of your panoramas in the future. As far as you keeping the NN4, I don't blame you. However, your mentioning it led me to look and it seems that the NN4 is not only now back in stock with the company, but also on sale. I might be able to finally purchase one, soon.
WM
Mike Adams
Senior Member
If you want to automate the process then a Cognisys rotary table, coupled with aStackshot controller will do it. https://www.cognisys-inc.com/products/stackshot3x/rotarytable.php