Go Wide with Digital Panoramas
Pages: 1, 2, 3

Tips and Tricks

Here are a few things I have learned from my experience building hundreds of digital panoramas.

• People--A panorama, like any picture, is much more interesting if people are in it. But people move a lot. So it's important to keep people in the center of the frame, not at the edge. The edge is where the images are merged, so if a person is in a different position between frames you will get a strange ghost effect in the finished panorama. My preferred technique is to first take a picture of the person, then shoot the pictures to the left and the right of the person, and finally reorder them in the application.

• Keep cropping--Just because all of the pictures came out and a really wide panorama is technically fantastic does not mean that it will be interesting to the viewer. Crop your panorama just like you would any other image.

• Reshoot bad frames individually--If someone walks through one of your frames right as you are shooting it, just take that shot again; you can remove the bad frame later. There's no need to reshoot the entire sequence.

• Time warp--If your panorama is along a busy street, you may never be able to find a good time to take the sequence of pictures in one go, but you will find that you can wait until each frame is clear before taking the shot. Then when you stitch it all together it will be completely free of people and cars.

• Two is enough--Sometimes just extending the frame of an image with one other is enough. An example is a group photo in which you may be able to fit everyone in by stitching two pictures together. Not all panoramas have to comprise five shots.

• Good apples among the bad--The 360-degree panorama may not have worked out, but that doesn't mean there aren't portions of the whole that would make good partial panoramas. You can rescue your efforts by using these portions instead of abandoning the whole set.

• Avoid wind and waves--High winds make trees shake, causing blur between frames. The constant motion of waves moves water in and out of the frame at a rapid pace. Both of these effects create ghosts. This effect is worsened by slow point-and-shoot digital cameras. Should you avoid forests and beaches? No. But you should proceed with care and take multiple shots to give yourself as many options as you can when you are ready to stitch the frames together.

• The space between--If all you're doing is shooting panoramas, it often can be difficult to find where one stops and another begins. You may find it handy to shoot a black frame (shoot into your hand or shirt) to mark the end of a panorama. This will separate the different series of shots in a thumbnail set.

• Keep the originals--Disk space is cheap. Keep all of the shots that you used to create successful panoramas. If you find better stitching software later, you will appreciate having the chance to restitch your old work.

• Single shots are good too--You should take a few single frames in full automatic mode just in case the panoramas don't come out.

• Do try this at home--Getting the settings right on the camera and in the software is critical to getting the best from your panoramas. That takes practice, and that practice is best done in a convenient location close to your computer. If your first panorama is at the top of a mountain after a 6-hour hike, failure could be hazardous to your computer.

• Dry runs--One way to make sure your panoramas are going to come out all right is to conduct a dry run, in which you spin the camera around as if you were taking the pictures, but without snapping any shots. This way you can adjust the height of the tripod or the zoom on the lens to make sure you are getting all of the content you want.

• 360-degree panoramas--Always use a tripod for these, as you will never keep the camera level in a complete circle manually. I almost never output these as anything but QuickTime VR.

Panorama Ideas

With these tips and techniques in hand, all we need now is the subject matter. Are scenic vistas all there is to panoramas?

Absolutely not! Lots of cool things can be done with photo-stitching technology. Here are some ideas to spark your imagination.

Figure 9. Same person, multiple places.

Because you can take pictures at any time and stitch them together later, you can move subjects around as you wish and have them appear multiple times in the same image. In this case I took about ten pictures of my daughter and stitched together four of them. The result isn't perfect, but it is fun.

Figure 10. The John Hancock Center.

It's very difficult to get both the base of a tall building and its top in the same shot without standing back quite a ways. Using photo stitching, I took a series of eight landscape shots starting at the base of the building and going to the top, and stitched them together with Panorama Factory. There is some obvious distortion in the image, but I think that adds to the artistic appeal. The point here is that you can think vertically as well as horizontally.

Figure 11. Local coffeehouse art exhibit.

To get the wide image in Figure 11 with a standard lens, I would have had to look through the window of the coffee shop. With a panorama I was able to get close to the art and still get the entire collection in one shot to give a sense of the room. Panoramas like these are being used to provide virtual 2-D and 3-D tours of house interiors by real estate agents.

Another nice opportunity for panoramic photography is at sporting events and concerts. A panoramic photograph can set the scene for the remainder of a series of photos.

Figure 12. Pac Bell Park.

Figure 12 shows Pac Bell Park just before a San Francisco Giants game starts. This kind of photograph is great for showing the view from a particular seat.

Figure 13. The Marin County Civic Center as a scrollable, interactive 360-degree panorama

Finally, you can use a 360-degree panoramic picture to give your viewer the experience of being there. In the case of Figure 13, you are on the top of the Marin County Civic Center, one of Frank Lloyd Wright's last architectural works. The signature blue roof extends into the distance just slightly off to the right.

Wrapping It Up

We have all seen the framed sequence of 35mm film shots that present a scenic vista panorama. The edge of each of the pictures is visible, and the way the tone varies from edge to edge is distracting. It's pretty, but we know that the photographer wanted a seamless vista. With today's digital technology it's now possible to build panoramas from multiple images with almost any camera and just a little software.

Not only can you take wide pictures of mountains and 360-degree interactive photographs of sunsets, you can also provide virtual tours of interiors and superwide group photos. The only limits are those of your imagination. So grab a camera and create some amazing panoramas.