Digital shooting opens up the world of stitching images to create high resolution panoramas. At the most basic level, you can pan and shoot across a scene and try to join the images in photoshop. You will soon find the seams don't match up easily all the time. Here are some tips and techniques that I've found useful in creating panoramas.

This image is composed of 6 portrait orientation images. Zuiko 35mm shift lens. Shifted up 10mm - this allows me to include the tops of the trees while keeping the camera level. keeping the camera level means verticals remain vertical and the horizon stays flat.

My gear and software:

Camera Canon 5D. 16-35 and Zuiko 35 shift lens.

A tripod and other panning gear (see below) to allow rotation around the nodal point of the lens are useful to eliminate parallax. This is less complex than it sounds. There is some good information about nodal points and panorama concepts at panoguide.com and Here . Finding the nodal point of a lens is a bit fiddly, but you only have to do it once. When you have recorded the nodal location for your favourite lenses, you can set up quickly and get shooting.

The software I use is PTGui which is excellent and easy to use. The website also has more information about shooting techniques.

Rotational Panoramas

For 'rotational' panoramas I use an RRS (really right stuff) panning clamp with rail (MPR 192) on a markins M10 ball head. A ball head makes creating a level panning plane much easier. The RRS clamps and rail are really nice to use and have an in-built spirit level. There is a quick release clamp attached to the sliding rail (with sticker indicating centre marking.

The sliding rail I use is handy because it has mm marking on it for easy setup. I can set my nodal point within a couple of seconds. The RRS stuff is joy to use. It just all clicks together perfectly.

Really right stuff pano link.

Flat Stitching.

Flat stiching can be done with a shift lens. Here are a couple of links to excellent tutorials by Jack Flesher and Moose Peterson on flat stiching technique. This article at Digital Outback Photo shows how to avoid parallax when flat stiching panoramas.

If you have a shift lens you can combine flat and rotational stitch techniques.

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My Shooting steps:

1. Decide on eventual composition

2. Decide how many separate frames I want to use. More frames = more resolution = more time shooting and stitching. I generally use as few shots as possible to get the composition I'm after.

3. Set up tripod. Attach panning clamp. Attach Nodal rail and set to the appropriate marking. Attach camera.

4. Level the whole contraption. Pan throught the arc to ensure that all desired compositional elements are included.

4. Manual focus. Manual exposure. Manual WB.

5. Shoot. Pan. Shoot. Pan. etc

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Some quick shooting tips:

1. manual settings are very important - this is to keep colours and brightness of adjacent frames the same. - all frames need to be the same exposure. - they need to be same DOF so apperture needs to remain constant. - keep focal distance constant. - don't forget to set white balance too - if you keep the camera on auto WB, the skies will be slightly different colours in each frame and stitching becomes a nightmare.

2. Rotate around nodal point to reduce parallax - especially if there are foreground elements within 3-4 meters of the camera.

3. Make sure the camera is level to prevent curved horizons and problems with verticals.

4. Shoot the frames as fast as possible to minimise changes in the clouds.

5. moving water is difficult. e.g. waves. try long exposure to blur in these situations.

6. Correct vignetting BEFORE stitching. or allow generous overlap to avoid needing to use the corners.

7. If you are doing multiple sequences take a photo of you hand before and after so that it is easier to group to images when processing.

8. Shoot left to right. This works better visually when browsing images on the computer as the earliest shots usually display first.

9. Try not to have complex structures at the seams. If there is a complex structure, then shoot an extra frame that encorporates the entire structure.

10. 20-40% overlap of frames makes stitching easier.

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A panning head is not that essential for stitching. Handheld panoramas are heaps of fun and line up nicely a lot of the time. A few handheld panos here.