Panoramic photo question

[pampaul]

I'd like to take some panoramic shots on our cruise this coming week. I have never taken these type of pictures so if you have, can you give me some ideas on what types of pics to take? I know the sunrises and sunsets but what else would be a great panoramic shot? Thanks!!!

[pierces]

I'd like to take some panoramic shots on our cruise this coming week. I have never taken these type of pictures so if you have, can you give me some ideas on what types of pics to take? I know the sunrises and sunsets but what else would be a great panoramic shot? Thanks!!!

 

Marketplaces, seashores and hillsides crowded with picturesque houses.

 

I took this four exposure shot of Acapulco bay and used Autostitch to assemble it.

 

Dave

[2boxers]

The length of the cruise ship, I have also take some vertical photos, a very tall building, and a great one of a palm tree.

 

I still carry my APS film camera around just for this option. My digital does not have panoramic, not sure any do?????? Now my problem is that I can not find frames for the panoramic photos anymore. Any ideas?

[2boxers]

Pierces,

 

Your photography is beautiful! My daughter is planning ti major in photography and I will have her look at your subjects, lighting and color. Love the captions too.

[pierces]

Pierces,

 

Your photography is beautiful! My daughter is planning ti major in photography and I will have her look at your subjects, lighting and color. Love the captions too.

 

Thanks! But, honestly, the subjects, lighting and color were all there...I just found them!;)

 

Tell your daughter "good luck". It has been a good thing for me over the years.

 

 

pampaul: 2boxers added a good point, vertical panoramas are great too. Waterfalls and tall cacti are some of my favorites!

 

Dave

[pampaul]

OOHHH, yes....I'll have to take a pic of the length of the boat and also vertical ones. Why couldn't I think of that one. Definately a palm tree. Oh, now I can't wait until tomorrow when we leave. We're leaving out of New York, so I'm sure I could find a tall building or two there to take a pic of....;)

[judynorth]

Pampaul,

 

I hope you post a link to your pictures when you return from your cruise. It will be interesting to see how your panoramas turned out. I had lots of fun with mine on our Alaska cruise last year. The vistas there are great and perfect for panoramas.

[zackiedawg]

The length of the cruise ship, I have also take some vertical photos, a very tall building, and a great one of a palm tree.

 

I still carry my APS film camera around just for this option. My digital does not have panoramic, not sure any do?????? Now my problem is that I can not find frames for the panoramic photos anymore. Any ideas?

 

Basically, all digital cameras can do panoramics...since with digital any number of shots can be stitched together with basic software. Some cameras have in-camera settings for taking panoramics, which show you the edge of the last shot overlayed on the display so you can line up the next shot, others don't. But the general idea is simply to snap a series of pictures, leaving at least some overlap (between 10 - 20% of each photo should overlap) so the stitching software has some reference for where to stitch.

 

Programs such as the free Autostitch can assemble your panorama practically by themselves - you just tell it which photos you want to stitch together and it figures out where they overlap and does the work.

 

Basic suggestions if doing this type of pano with digital cameras - remember to keep the camera in one spot, don't change the zoom at all, and try to pivot the camera as accurately as possible at its centerpoint with the lens. Tripod mounted is by far the best method. Some people try taking a series for a panorama and snap a series of pics keeping their body in one place, and rotating the camera around...but this will create parallax error and sometimes cause photos not to stitch together properly. If you don't have a tripod, try to imagine the camera mounted on a pole where all it could do is rotate left or right...that's how you want to take panoramas!

[judynorth]

The big thing that an in-camera panorama setting does is keep the exposure the same for all the shots in a series. You won't have as much of a problem with the sky being different colors in each separate shot because the setting does not change over the series. This is a big help when you are shooting a panorama of a sunrise or sunset where some pictures in the series will be darker than others.

 

Photoshop Elements 4 has a feature that stitches together a series of shots for a panorama and you can use many of the editing features to eliminate the parallax problem that sometimes occurs. My camera and PE4 also recommend that you overlap the pictures by about 30% for the best results. I have successfully created panoramas with up to 8 pictures with a handheld camera. It takes a little editing at the points where the pictures overlap sometimes but it works.

[pierces]

If you are going to do panoramas for a living and plan on buying a special panorama mount for your tripod with click-stops at various degree increments, bubble levels and adjustments to make your camera rotate around the nodal point of the lens, there are specialized software packages out there that actually cost less than the aforementioned panorama mount. If, however, you are like me and just want to snap the occasional grand vista, you have to try Autostitch. For simple panoramas, this is the next best thing to magic.

 

Free functional "demo" for private use.

 

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html

 

I did these with Autostitch simply by loading them. No adjustment, no particular order. It even balanced the exposure to some degree. There are a bunch of really technical options, but all I ever use is the scale to control the size of the final image.

 

San Diego (The rail was curved by the stitcher while maintaining the horizon.)

 

Biscayne Bay (The roof was actually curved)

 

 

If you have a manual exposure option on your camera, use it when doing a panorama. That assures even exposure.

 

Dave

[judynorth]

WOW! I just downloaded Autostitch and it is great. I tried it with one of my panoramas of the Seattle skyline and I couldn't see a thing that I had to do to it except perhaps crop the picture. Thanks for the link and the recommendation.

[pierces]

WOW! I just downloaded Autostitch and it is great. I tried it with one of my panoramas of the Seattle skyline and I couldn't see a thing that I had to do to it except perhaps crop the picture. Thanks for the link and the recommendation.

 

Now try Google's Picasa for organization and IrfanView for batch processing and the fastest multiformat viewer I've ever seen!

 

I used Picasa to organize my digital photos iinto tidy, rapidly searchable albums and collections n less than 8 hours. Granted, I already had them batch named and sorted into folders and sub-folders, but to get them to a point where I can instantly find any one of 39,000 photos in under 8 hours is quite a testament. It also provides incrediblly easy quick fix capability that doesn't touch the original.

 

I have all picture formats (even RAW files) assigned to IrfanView. Double-click on any image and it pops up in a heartbeat. it also has a lossles rotation feature, a thumbnail viewer, a slideshow generator and batch processing that's really easy to use.

 

For freebies, they are both real keepers!

 

Dave

[FathomOfTheOpera]

OP, if you are still looking for ideas :) here are some of my pano's from a recent trip:

 

Acapulco:

 

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r271/mrscoffee93010/Panama_2006/P_0450.jpg

 

 

Aruba:

 

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r271/mrscoffee93010/Panama_2006/P_1430-1.jpg

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r271/mrscoffee93010/Panama_2006/P_1540.jpg

 

 

Jamaica:

 

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r271/mrscoffee93010/Panama_2006/P_1590-1.jpg

[judynorth]

I used Autostitch for all my Canada/New England panoramas and it was great. There was only one picture where it didn't work - the Varrazano Narrows Bridge. I had to do a little manual tweeking there. (Both versions are on Webshots) You can see my panoramas at the following link:

 

http://travel.webshots.com/album/554713638kujaMJ

[Guest garden4cook]

I jsut got into digital in December 05, and if i can do panoramics, so can you!

 

FYI: I went ot Alaska in June 06 and was there, that i learned my camera. I had taken along an APS camera and was soooooo very disapointed in the graininess of the shots that out of 9 rolls of APS film, i am using apprx 6 photographs! Maybe the graininess is okay for some, but it was not for me. Besides that, I could not adjust the exposure which cause a problem in many areas of the cruise.

 

First, I have a Canon Powershot S60 that can shoot wide-angle...the helps for real panoramics. In addition, I shot most of the pics at a high resolution, so I could make large high quality prints if i wanted to. So, i shot many pics wide angle and cropped later. Some shots I used the "stitch" effect the camera came with. It was sooooooo very easy to use the stitch effect when i got home. But really, after shooting at such a righ resolution, i was able to get beautiful cropped panoramics!!!

 

If you can share your email address and i will forwad a few AWESOME Alaska panoramics your way. Since I have a Mac, many of the sites are not Mac friendly and I cannot post my pics.

 

It really was easy and I got absolutely beautiful images!

[judynorth]

I'd love to see some of your panoramas. judynorthATcoxDOTnet

[pierces]

Autostitch is a wonderful tool! This is a 4 shot stitch of the Alaska range as seen from the Talkeetna Lodge.

 

Click on the photo to see a larger version...

 

 

I did a few others from Alaska and had a couple printed large format. The digital age has changed things forever.

 

Dave

[zackiedawg]

Here's a pair of panoramas I strung together from my Radiance cruise a couple of weeks ago:

 

1. Phillipsburg, St. Maarten:

(click link for larger version: http://www.pbase.com/zackiedawg/image/69795215. Under the image, choose 'original' size)

 

2. Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas:

(click link for larger version: http://www.pbase.com/zackiedawg/image/69795313. Under the image, choose 'original' size)

[berkley123]

OP, if you are still looking for ideas :) here are some of my pano's from a recent trip:

 

Acapulco:

 

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r271/mrscoffee93010/Panama_2006/P_0450.jpg

 

 

Aruba:

 

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r271/mrscoffee93010/Panama_2006/P_1430-1.jpg

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r271/mrscoffee93010/Panama_2006/P_1540.jpg

 

 

Jamaica:

 

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r271/mrscoffee93010/Panama_2006/P_1590-1.jpg

 

Those photos are fantastic. Thanks for posting them.

[Deaf Dude]

If your digital camera has a high Mega Pixel count you can make normal pictures look like Panaorama pics with some croping. Here is a sample.

 

Original pic 2560 X 1920

 

Panorama Pic 2300 X 654

[CleoPat]

If you are "stitching" together to make a panoramic photo, how do you get it "developed" into a print? Can you? or are you just using the shot online?

[judynorth]

If you are "stitching" together to make a panoramic photo, how do you get it "developed" into a print? Can you? or are you just using the shot online?

 

I have created files with 3 panoramas per 12 x 18" page. Each panorama is 4" x 18" (or less if necessary). Then I have the pages printed at a place like Costco. It costs about $2 per page. I cut the strips apart and framed several of them together. If you arrange things right you can avoid the cutting but I didn't think ahead. :o I used Photoshop Elements to create the file with 3 pictures on the page. I hope this answers your question.

 

BTW, Autostitch is great. I just increased the pixel width to a larger number (default is 1600) so that the file is larger and prints better.

[ghsmith178613]

TRIPOD! TRIPOD! TRIPOD! Don't forget the tripod. The tripod head normally does a 360 in the horizontal and 180 in the vertical. A 180 pano can be 6+ photos digitally "stitched" together. Practice before you go. Be sure to leave lots of overlap between frames for the software to crunch on. The software does some really hardcore math - looking at shape and color values. It's all easy to use. Even the Adobe version is super simple.

 

Good luck and happy shooting.

[Cuizer2]

I have some panoramic photos that I stitched together ...

 

This is the rear pool of the Glory ...

 

 

This is the main pool on the Glory ...

 

 

This is the Vision of the Seas. I have a better one, but I don't have it hosted on the Internet ...

 

[Cruiser Forever]

I have some panoramic photos that I stitched together ...

 

 

You have some great panoramic pics in this post. Real Nice!!!:D Thanks for sharing them.