In our travels, what impresses me about what we see quite often cannot be recorded in a standard aspect ratio (4x3 or even 9x16) photograph. For example, here is a single photo that I took with my Nikon D5000.
Sure, this gets the basic elements of the scene -- the courtyard, the walkway, stuff in the corner... But my eye sees a lot more to the right of this scene. Here is a panorama of the same scene:
I chose this example because it isn't particularly dramatic, yet gets the point of the changed feeling a photo with a wider angle conveys.
Taking these pictures is no longer very hard. You just have to start thinking and shotting this way when looking at scene. Here's what I do:
When I get home, I use a program named Autopano Pro -- but there are lots of different programs you can use for this. Here are the features of Autopano I like:
Finally, I embed a growing collection of such panoramas I have been taking for 10 years as the banner of my blog. Every time you visit this page, a panorama will be selected at random.
Taking these pictures is no longer very hard. You just have to start thinking and shotting this way when looking at scene. Here's what I do:
- Look at the scene.
- Find the left edge.
- Take about 3 or 4 images, rotating your body from left to right, shooting pictures close together in time.
When I get home, I use a program named Autopano Pro -- but there are lots of different programs you can use for this. Here are the features of Autopano I like:
- Automatic panorama discovery: You can direct Autopano to look at all of the photos in a directory to find those that make up a panorama. This works well if use a different directory for each day's photos. Point Autopano at the photos in a given directory, set it off to discover and stitch, go to bed, wake up in the morning with your panoramas.
- If you want, you can also select the photos to be used in the stitching of a wide photo manually. Sometimes when you have just a few, this is the better way to go.
- Autopano doesn't care if your are doing a horizontal stitch, vertical stitch or the more general mosaic stitch where you have moved your camera in both directions.
- Finally, if you want to control the stitching settings yourself, you can go as deep into this as you want. I find that the automated settings serve my purposes.
Finally, I embed a growing collection of such panoramas I have been taking for 10 years as the banner of my blog. Every time you visit this page, a panorama will be selected at random.
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