I started shooting panorama photography from 2015, and luckily I had some recognition for my architectural panorama series: The land of connections and The city of Juncture.
Since then Panorama photography is one of my core work, and have been shooting many panoramas.
Why panorama attracts me?
Panorama is not just a widen photo.
You can see the great examples of panorama pictures at winning galleries of Pano awards, which I’ve been challenging from 2015.
Panorama expands my creativity.
Panorama tests me how I can go farther, beyond the ordinary.
I’m always thinking how I make my photos more interesting, seeking different angle and compositions, panorama is a good medium for me.
I need to open my mind wide open when I shoot a panorama.
Is panorama difficult ?
Yes and No.
Technically speaking, it’s not difficult shooting a panorama itself.
For example, bellow picture was taken without any special gears. I used just a regular ball head. You don’t have to care much for shooting distance subjects with a telephoto lens.
Three pictures were merged at taken at an observation floor at Cosmo tower, Osaka.
Although for better panorama shooting, the first you need to know is ” no-parallax point” which makes easier and smoother to merge multiple photos later in post process.
Then, you need just a few additional gears: panorama rotator and a rail.
Of course a better tripod makes you comfortable too.
Stitching
“Stitching” is the term, merging multiple photos for a single panorama picture.
When it comes to stitching software Adobe ” Lightroom” or “Photoshop” can do a great job in their panorama capability. Although, as they have very limited tools for making a panorama, you would feel soon that you need more panorama oriented software like PTGui.
I’ll recommend some of the gears, and software, I use ( or I’d used before) in upcoming my blog post.
What is difficult?
In short, it’s not different for “shooting a better panorama” from regular(one-shot) photography very much:
“composition” ,”location” and “good light”.
The clear difference is : you can’t see the final image in the field.”
Panorama Apps (in your phone ) and some compact camera has the panorama capability and see the end result instantly, but (still!!) using DSLR, they are not able to in-camera stitch capability( I’ve known so far. tell me if you know those camera.)
Of course, if you brought a laptop to the filed and have quick development, you can see the result, but who want to do that?
※Vertical panorama is a little trickier than conventional horizontal panorama
What is fun?
On the contrary , unable to see the end result is not always bad thing.
I am always exciting to see the merging process of panorama shooting later in the post process.
When the result is what I expected, that’s great. Better, often it exceeds my expectation.
What’s next
As I said before “shooting panorama” is not difficult, but you need to have some experience for achieving a satisfied result.
I hope my experience shorten your time of “trial and errors”, or spending time in Amazon for seeking better panorama tools. You should do have the right tools at first point.
See you at the “Recommendation for Panorama photography Part1: Basic”
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