I am fortunate to have access to the rooftops of several highrise buildings in my city, and am tasked with taking some panoramic photographs of the city for my firm, ideally 360-degree views.
This is not something I will be able to easily repeat, so I would like to do as much preparation as possible to get good shots. I have a couple questions:
- What is the best time of day to do this? Midday, when the sun won't be in any shot?
- Do I take many shots with a long focal length, or use a wide lens and take as few as possible, to make stitching easier?
- I know it is best to only rotate the camera, not move it, when doing panoramas. For some buildings this may be possible, but I expect that I will have to walk around a bit to get complete coverage on a lot of them. Is there any way I can mitigate this problem? Would I be better off doing two 180-degree panoramas from opposite corners instead of trying to get one all the way around?
Anything else I should know about?
EDIT: Lots of good suggestions, thanks. I hadn't even thought about exposure settings, and it seems that there is a mix of "better to use manual so all shots are the same" and "better to use auto so that you get better dynamic range from light to dark spots." Anyone had good or bad results with one way or the other?