Taking Panoramic Landscapes - The Easy Solution

I love panoramas. There's something very appealing about their shape. It's probably because we see the world more in these dimensions than the near square format of standard film/sensor frames. It might also explain the upsurge in the popularity of widescreen TVs!

Panoramas have a reputation of being hard to take. There are dedicated panorama cameras available but unless you've got at least a thousand dollars to spare, you probably can't afford one! But you can take panoramas with any kind of camera.

All a panorama is, is a sequence of images where you turn slightly for each different frame. In the old days, before PCs and the likes of Photoshop were around, you'd take your prints (there wasn't much point in shooting panoramas on slide film, for obvious reasons), lay them out on a table and position them over each other where they overlapped. A bit of sticky tape held them together. [As a side note, this technique was used by NASA to build up mosaic pictures of the planets and satellites their spaceprobes visited, up till the late '70s/early 80s when computers were introduced to make the process less laborious].

Now that PCs and image manipulation packages are easy to come by, high-quality panoramas can now be created by anyone. If you're shooting slide or negative film, you will need to have your images scanned before you do anything else.

DIY Panoramas
The idea behind taking panoramas with SLR cameras is that the camera is rotated around its nodal point during each successive exposure. What's the Nodal Point? It's the point inside your camera where the light rays converge and flip over. It's different for different focal lengths (on zoom lenses) and for different prime lenses (fixed focal length lenses like a standard 50mm lens). It's important to rotate about this point to eliminate image mismatches due to changes in parallax. Parallax is the apparent shift of an object against a background due to a change in observer position.

Just to be clear, the Nodal Point is not the same as the film/sensor plane. Generally, for most SLR cameras and lenses, the Nodal Point is located somewhere towards the center of the lens barrel and lies in front of the image/sensor plane.

The Problem With Parallax
Parallax is easily demonstrated by a simple experiment. Hold up your finger about 1 foot in front of your face and alternately open and close your left and right eyes. You'll notice that your finger shifts left and right with respect to the background depending on which eye is open. Try another experiment: With your finger still raised, close one eye and turn your head from side to side. Notice how your finger moves with respect to the background. This relative movement is due to the fact that you're not rotating your head around your eye's nodal point, which is somewhere in the center of your eyeball. Instead, you're rotating about your spine which is several inches to the rear and off to one side. It is this relative side-to-side motion that we try to eliminate when setting up a camera for panoramas. [If you want to read up more about parallax, Wikipedia have a good explanatory article.]

Now, if you consider a camera held up to your face - it will suffer even greater parallax errors as it's farther from your spine (the point of rotation of your head) than your eye. It's surprisingly common for people to take panoramas in this fashion and then find the individual pictures don't match up.

So use a tripod and rotate the camera on the tripod. The parallax errors will be significantly smaller but there will still be some error involved. However, the images will match up better than with the head rotation method.

Mechanical Contraptions
What perfectionists strive for is to have the camera rotate about the nodal point. There are brackets and contraptions available that will let you offset your camera from the tripod's axis of rotation and with a little experimentation and trial and error, you can position your camera so that its nodal point is directly over the axis of rotation of the bracket. Getting this spot-on means your images should line up perfectly.

A few months ago I bought such a bracket - the Kaidan Kiwi. This comes in two halves which produce an L-shaped bracket. Its instruction manual explains how to set it up and find the nodal point for your camera and lens. However, you have to get your tripod perfectly level before using it, otherwise you end up with a curved panorama rather than a straight one.

I've had good success using this bracket, but it is large and heavy and certainly a bit too cumbersome to be carrying on long walks or while away on vacation.

AutoStitch To The Rescue
Then I recently came across a free bit of software called AutoStitch. Written by a couple of students at the University of Columbia, this takes all of the heartache out of creating panoramas. All you do is select the size of the final image and tell it what images you want it to stitch. It then goes off and produces your panorama.

It really is that simple. Unless successive images are radically different in exposure (i.e. one image to too light or dark compared to another), it seamlessly blends them. It performs all the warping of the images necessary to get them to align (other software I've used can cause ghosting in the overlap areas where it hasn't quite aligned the images). It also aligns multiple rows of images rather than just a single strip.

Even better, it doesn't require you to set up your camera to rotate about its nodal point. When I was in Crete last year, I tried shooting a few panoramas with my Canon EOS 300D held up to my eye (I didn't have a tripod with me). When I got home, I tried stitching the pictures together using various bits of software (including software dedicated to stitching images together) and didn't get satisfactory results. I knew, though, that it was because I'd swivelled the camera about my spine. But I tried these images with AutoStitch and they came out perfectly. See for yourself here.

I went walking up the Wicklow mountains in Ireland no too long ago and up to a high point called Djouce which offers a view over the rolling hills south of Dublin. As an experiment, I shot 8 frames while rotating my head about the scene (camera to eye as per normal). I wanted to see if the Crete photos were a fluke as the panoramas from there were composed of, at most, 3 frames each (sometimes 2).

Conclusion
What can I say? I plugged 8 frames into AutoStitch and after a bit of time processing the images, it produced a perfect panorama with no ghosting I could see in the overlap reasons. I like software like that. It may only do one thing but it does that one thing very well.

Give AutoStitch a try. It's free and, so far, it produces the best panoramic results of all the panorama/stitching software I've tried.

One thing to remember when taking panoramas is that the exposures of each frame should be the same. So if you make your first exposure at f/8 and 1/125 of a second, take them all using those settings. Yes, you will have to put your camera into manual mode. Otherwise, you run the risk of having radically different exposures for your images. For example, if you're panning over a landscape that contains water, like a lake, any sunlight reflected off the water may make your camera take a shorter exposure than for the other frames in your sequence. Setting your camera to manual mode will prevent that.

Gary Nugent is a software engineer by profession and has been in the business for over 20 years. Photography has been a hobby for an even longer period of time and he's now even more passionate about it since making the switch to using a digital SLR camera. He runs the Great Landscape Photography website: http://www.great-landscape-photography.com

---

Photography Poses ? The Missing Ingredient

You've read all the "best digital camera" articles, got the best price on your first digital camera, and even glanced at its owner's manual. Are you itching... Read More

Is Film Better than Digital for Weddings?

As a professional wedding photographer I get this question asked more than anything else. Rarely will somebody ask me about my wedding photography education, awards, or professional... Read More

Freelance Photography: How to Begin Your Career

Photography is a vast world. There are many different types of photography and many different kinds of people that enjoy it. It's a hobby that be relatively... Read More

The Beginner Buyers Guide To Digital Cameras, Or The Ins And Outs Of Megapixels

The most important part of buying a digital camera is making sure that the one you select meets all of your needs.Digital Camera 101Better digital cameras uses... Read More

Where Do Great Ideas Come From?

At a Photo Club meeting I attended recently, the President made a comment on another meeting he had attended, where someone in the audience asked the presenter... Read More

Kodak Digital Cameras - The Giant Comes To Digital

George Eastman, founder of Kodak is world renowned today. Digital cameras or cinematography, Kodak has excelled in all fields. In this article, we will view the rich... Read More

Where to Find Cheap Disposable Cameras

There are many kinds of disposable cameras. All disposable cameras are already inexpensive, but there are some that are even more of a bargain than others. While... Read More

Digital Camera Auto Exposure and Auto Focus

The digital camera being a fantastic and technologically advanced device contains many different applications of its own. Many users of this fabulous device are unaware of quite... Read More

Online Photo Sharing: Not Just for Family and Vacation Photos

You may have joined the photo-sharing craze to share your family vacation photos, but have you thought about other uses for photo sharing?Here are just a few... Read More

Digital Cameras and Digital Photography

Before you rush into buying your digital camera this holiday season make sure your properly informed. Many consumers during the holiday season rush into purchasing electronic equipment... Read More

Start Up a Travel Photography Business

Too many people have the idea that being paid to take photographs of exotic places is the ideal job. It may take years of effort to be... Read More

10 MORE Ways to Make Money with Your Digital Cameras

1. Pet photos - advertise a Pet Photography business where you photograph pets with their owners. Most owners won't struggle to take a photograph with their pet... Read More

Top of the Line Digital Cameras

If you think that digital cameras are for snapshots only, then you obviously haven't heard about SLR (Single Lens Reflex) digital cameras. SLR is a type of... Read More

Sepia Toned Prints from Your Colour or Black and White Photos ? 5 Minute Digital Fix

Quite often I will have clients bring in old photographs of their "elder" relatives that were taken before colour photography was around.This generally means that the photos... Read More

Photo Equipment Lists

You arrive at your photo shoot excited about the images you are about to take ? that is, until you realize that you have left an important... Read More

Underwater Photography: The Wonders Under the Sea

The world of photography is an amazing one. It's been with us for quite a while now but it is constantly changing. Cameras are changing and improving.... Read More

Get The Most Out of Your Digital Camera Today!

Point and click. The new life of digital cameras gives us all the opportunity to capture images as we go. Whether you simply hit the shutter button... Read More

How to Photograph Your Baby

Babies make the best and the worst subjects to photograph. They are the best for two reasons, people are more tolerant at looking at baby photos, as... Read More

How Can I Preserve My Lifetime of Memories in Photographs?

Like most folks you have probably have organized and sorted your photos atleast once. The problem is they never seem to stay organized no matter how hard... Read More

Tips for Better Vacation Photos

Photos are a great way to share your travel experiences with family and friends. Here are a few suggestions to help you capture vacation memories you will... Read More

Digital Zoom Versus Optical Zoom

The digital camera is but a technological advancement of the conventional analog camera. And thus every component of the analog camera must have been upgraded or changed... Read More

Digital SLR Camera versus a Compact Digital Camera

Digital Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras are excellent cameras that produce clearer, sharper and more colourful images than most point and shoot digital cameras available. With prices... Read More

Nikon Digital Cameras - Cool(pix) and Functional

Even though Nikon entered the camera world by 1948, today its digital cameras are well known everywhere. The company started small but always dreamed big. Here is... Read More

The Truth About Pixels, Part 2-1: Printing 4x3 Inch Photos

Why is a 3 megapixel camera better than a 1 megapixel camera? It really depends on how you intend to reproduce the picture. The reason cameras produce... Read More

Getting The Right Digital Camera For You

There are really great advantages in digital photography:You can shoot till you dropTaking digital images on your camera has no implication other then you have captured the... Read More

Choosing The Right Digital Camera

Let's get something straight right out of the box. If you're looking to buy a new digital camera, you don't really have to be an expert in... Read More