Hot answers tagged panorama
36
It's essentially a way of using image stitching so you can use a long lens to shoot a wide-angle image.
As with a panoramic image, you shoot a number of pictures that will eventually become one image. The idea is to use a relatively long lens, like a "portrait length" telephoto or longer, so that you can get a very shallow depth of field on your main ...
35
I've had to preserve whiteboard scribbles a few times. The problem is that you usually can't control the lighting and it's rarely good. The technique I've converged on is to take two pictures. With the camera on a tripod, take the first picture of the board as is. Then erase the board and take the second picture with exactly the same settings.
Now ...
31
Everything that applies to shooting a panorama applies to shooting one of these. A tripod makes assembling more convenient but means you can't pan to follow the action. It's important to rotate the camera and not move your feet in order to make sure the shots line up. Locking the focus is going to be necessary. Same with shutter/aperture.
I've only done one ...
16
Doing HDR first has advantages: the HDR process is working on a smaller image size, and you only have to stitch one set of images.
But the disadvantage of doing the HDR step first is it becomes more difficult to exactly match the tones between sets of images, so when you stitch them together you get more obvious seams. If you are able to control this and ...
16
You're right — Hugin works very well for this. This is from a series of pictures I took with a P&S Fujifilm camera at the Children's Museum. It's not an action shot except in the sense that all pictures of children are action shots, but the process is pretty much the same.
Photo by me. Licensed CC BY-SA 3.0 in this size.
The images were all hand-held ...
16
Apart from the the answers suggested by others, I recommend a few other tips. Based on what I read.
Shoot the pics in Vertical mode. You might have to take more shots, but you'll realize at the end that the edge distortion is less when you click in Vertical mode. When you shoot in horizontal mode, you end up getting the edges cut when the final output is ...
13
I tried a model like this in the store, both horizontally and vertically. I was not satisfied with the quality. The particular model that I tried used seemed to be using the HD video imaging pipeline to do its stuff. Also, when used vertically, it required you to change the orientation of the camera by 90deg. In the end, the small dimension on the pano was ...
13
In addition to the answers presented already, there's a huge potential disadavantage of stitching first - the stitching programs might decide to stitch each exposure differently leading to misalignment when you do the HDR.
Unless the stitching program lets you repeat the warping with different images this could be the deciding factor in which to do first.
...
12
In addition to the format limitation you mention (can't do 2x2, 4x2 etc.) you also can't choose the panorama projection. The sweep panorama will use a cylindrical projection, which is usually the best choice, however it does bend straight lines. Up to a certain width of panorama, the rectilinear projection is usually better.
See: ...
12
A panorama is, in its original usage, a wide angle horizontal image. In fact, it's a horizontal image painted in a complete circle around a room. That was in the late 1700s, though, and by the time the idea got to photography, it had been watered down to some degree, generally describing any image with a field of view greater than 100º, and then eventually ...
11
Go to the signage printing industry
Sometimes technology intended for one industry is perfect for another industry and this is a case in point. Find a small business near you that specialises in printing large vinyl signs for the advertising industry. Their rates are usually significantly cheaper than photographic printing and the results are every bit as ...
10
You have two excellent answers already, but as @Maynard has enquired about alternative techniques, there is another option if you have a flashgun with a stroboscopic mode:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/javo_noso_comio/3414155008/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14643312@N02/4510423513/
This basically works by firing the flash multiple times during a single ...
10
What you are trying to construct is a parallel motion panorama. Its been on my TODO List to do so far a while but I have not done it myself yet.
Microsoft ICE supports this. It is the only software which I know of to do automatic stitching of parallel motion panoramas. You will find that option under 'Camera Motion' below and to the left of the preview ...
10
I regularly take photos of whiteboards sized 3' x 4' or larger with my cell phone camera to record meeting notes, and it produces passable results. The D90 should absolutely kick butt on this.
The two factors you want to avoid are glare and motion blur. As Guffa mentioned, you want to avoid glare from ambient (room) lighting, so get into a position as ...
9
I used to use Hugin which is open source project. It is able to find correct exposure for most cases, even if You weren't exposing separate shots in the same way.
F.ex. here I have made some basic RAW->TIFF processing and put it into hugin:
9
Let me advocate for offline printing for a second :) I used to print online, but I rely on a local print shop nowadays. I'm not talking CVS or Walmart (in the US), but small, quality print shops run by photographers. Not only is it good for the local economy, but you won't beat that kind of interaction. Print professionals are passionate about what they do, ...
9
I'm going to need to answer these in the reverse order and I'm going to assue you're probably going to be blowing these up quite large.
If you're going to move the camera several feet to get the shots you want, you're going to get some sort mismatch when you stitch. If you're then going to blow the pictures up large, it's very likely going to look some ...
9
I can't settle for an alternative that's not vertically 360 degrees (or at least much more than 180 degrees).
A camera that shoots in every possible direction is said to have a field of view of 360 (horizontal) x 180 (vertical) degrees. Having more than that means you will be capturing some or all of the scene twice. Consider an imaginary arc that spans ...
8
The truth is that it gives you a compromise which may be what some are exactly looking for:
Motion panoramas are extremely easy to do, up to 360-degrees now. Within seconds you have a circular panorama right in the camera. You can try it as often as you like on the spot until you are happy with it or have reached its limit.
The output (as already ...
8
For HDRs you don't need anything special, just any tripod that can sustain the weight of your camera will do. So select by price, weight, robustness (choose any two). If you want to take panoramas too, consider buying a tripod with interchangeable heads.
Regarding the head. I find ball heads easier to use in most situations, you can compose quicker. But ...
8
When you shoot a panorama by only rotating the camera then you're simulating the effect of a wider field of view lens (even if you use a non-standard projection).
If you move the camera then what you're trying to produce has no equivialent in reality, i.e. its not a 2D projection of a 3D scene like most photographs, it's something else all together! Because ...
8
Yes, that was years ago. Kodak used to make a disposable camera with an APS size film which could be shot in 3 formats, one of them a 2:1 panorama. Ironically, the APS size stuck for the majority of DSLR sensors.
There are very few digital cameras for under $100 USD but none of them have a one shot panorama function or an ultra-wide lens. If you already ...
8
I believe the Horizon camera is an example of a slit-scanning camera. During the exposure, the lens assembly rotates from one end of the panoramic field to the other. A narrow slit is used to ensure that only a thin line of film is being exposed at any instant. The result is that the whole image is exposed using the center of the lens, which can form a ...
7
The only program I've used is Hugin, but I'm really happy with it. I think it's pretty easy to use, and for the most part it's an automatic process. You'll spend most of your time waiting for the software to process the photos, so your best bet is to just install some software and start using it so you can get your results sooner!
7
Although there's a previous answer that covers stitching tools, as I discovered in my question about action shots, there are important considerations when you're shooting the pictures that you're going to combine, too.
Make sure you're shooting in Manual
mode so that your exposure is the
same for all the shots in the
panorama. Stitching software is
...
7
Question: How do photographers usualy make rivers in gigapixel photos?
Answer: They buy a Gigapan robot which shoots a structured panorama, i.e. a regular one in say a 5x5 grid and then use the software that came with their robot to merge the images. Having said that though, if you have such a structured layout, you could use Microsoft ICE just as well (as ...
7
As a general rule, the stitching program should get the highest possible detail of the images, allowing it to make the best out of it. Therefore, I would not pre-process the images as it might degrade the information.
However, if you have a large amount of input images, it might get difficult to work with the resulting large picture afterwards, due to your ...
6
There is no set rule for this; it all depends what you want to photograph. If a photo is wider than a 4:1 ratio, it will look a bit too thin, but you could shoot a whole 360° panorama and make an interactive QuickTime panorama that lets you pan and zoom within a window.
If the end result is a good photo, it shouldn't matter what the exact proportions are.
6
This feature is now built in to the new iPhone 5, and is also available on the iPhone 4S (if you have updated to iOS6).
The same feature is also built into Android devices with the (little known) panoramic feature.
Camera > Settings > Shooting Mode > Panorama
Short video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txwdD11sW1s
6
There are two apps that are both seem to be well-liked that provide the pan/sweep functionality you desire.
360 Panorama (by Occipital - currently $1.99)
Photosynth (by Microsoft - currently free)
Both apps allow you to look at the phone's screen, pan/sweep the camera to record, and the app will stitch together a panoramic image based on the area you ...
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