TECHNIQUE Shooting panoramas
Panoramic pics A panorama is a picture or photograph displaying a wide view of a scene. This can be tricky to obtain in a single shot without excessive cropping and resulting loss of resolution. Nina Bailey shows how to overcome the problem by merging a number of separate images. In its simplest form a panorama is a single image that has been cropped into a narrow format. But it can also be a much more complex affair, composed of multiple images that are merged together. A panorama comprised of multiple images begins as a sequence of individual photos taken in succession across a wide expanse of a scene. The separate images are then stitched together using specialist software to form a final image, which conveys a wider view than you would usually be
able to achieve in a single image. Shooting a panorama made up of individual images allows you to use a lens that does not produce distortions, which are often associated with wide-angle lenses. It also results in a final image with a greater height-to-width ratio than if you were using a wide-angle lens to capture the same scene in a single image, which produces a distinctly thin panorama. Another key advantage of shooting a panorama made up of multiple images is that you can achieve a final image with a much higher resolution than might be possible with a single frame, when extensive cropping results in the loss of up to two-thirds of the available pixels, significantly reducing the image quality. This image of a coastline (left) has a file size of 53MB. Cropping it to a narrow panorama (below) has reduced it to 19MB. This might be adequate for your needs and is far simpler than merging multiple images. EOS R6, RF 24-105mm f4L IS USM lens at 53mm, 1/250 second at f11, ISO 100.
14 | EOS EOSmagazine magazine October-December 2021 preview 32 October-December 2021
Tripod or not
It is possible to shoot a panorama using your camera handheld, but because you need to pan the camera around a fixed point, it is advisable to shoot with your camera mounted on a tripod. A tripod provides greater precision, and there are specialist tripod heads available for shooting panoramas. These are marked in degrees and enable precise overlapping and framing of the individual images. They work very well, but they are not essential if you intend only to shoot the occasional panorama. Some images in this article were shot with the camera mounted on a tripod, but it takes a while to set up and on uneven ground shooting handheld often produces a better result. Using the grid display in the camera’s viewfinder makes it easy to keep the camera level while shooting the sequence.
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