Part 1 - Panoramic Photography - Mistakes

Part 3 - How to Stitch Pictures with Photoshop

Panoramic Photography - Part 2

Tips and Tricks

In panoramic photography part 1, i wrote about my mistakes in my first panorama photography attempt. Now we will see how to make to it right, how to take pictures to create panoramas. It is not hard to create nice panoramas if you know two or three simple tips.

Use Manual Mode of the Camera

Switch your camera to the manual mode which helps to eliminate color and contrast differences between the pictures that you take. As i mentioned in Panoramic Photography - Part 1, using your camera on auto or semi-auto mode can create color and contrast differences between photos.

After switching to the manual mode, find the optimum aperture and shutter settings for the scene, by taking a couple of shots before you actually start taking pictures for the panorama.

Use Manual Focus

Using manual focus avoids focusing to different points which can cause a mistake that you can not fix at photoshop. So use manual focus, focus to the point that you want and do not change it after you are done with taking all the shots for panorama.

Use Normal or Tele Lenses

Wide angle lenses can cause deformation at the edges of picture thus makes harder to stitch the pictures and make a good panorama. So use a tele or normal lens for panorama pictures also if you have a zoom lens you can narrow the angle by zooming in. If you have a 18-55mm zoom lens, use 50-55mm which is ideal for this kind of pictures.

Use a Software to Stitch the Pictures

Using software for stitching pictures makes the job easier and more smooth. Software that you can use for stitching the pictures and creating panoramas;

Free :

Panorama BackPacker a0.7

Panorama Perfect Lite 1.6.2

Free to Try:

Photoshop CS3 Extended

ArcSoft Panorama Maker 4

The Panorama Factory 3.3

Panorama Express 1.0

See also Part 1 “Mistakes”

End of Part 2

Part 3 - How to Stitch Pictures with Photoshop

Part 1 - Panoramic Photography - Mistakes