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.

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.

A panorama of the fishing town of Saint Jean-de-Luz, France (top) made up of nine individual images (above) taken handheld. AE Lock was used to ensure consistent exposures throughout the sequence. The alternative would have been to set the exposure manually, which would also have fixed the exposure for all the images. The scene was captured across almost 180°, so the sky is noticeably darker on the right hand side. This would have resulted in the images on the right becoming darker if the exposure had been left on autoexposure. EOS 600D, EF-S 15-85mm f3.5-5.6 IS USM lens at 44mm 1/160 second at f8, ISO 100.

Planning the image

First of all, you need to find a suitable scene for your panorama. The lighting across the area should be fairly even as the exposure needs to be the same in all the individual shots. Shoot a few images in various parts of the scene to check that the exposure is even. The narrower the area that you photograph, the more likely the exposure is to remain the same across the scene. In situations where there is a significant difference in exposure between images, shooting RAW files will give you more options in post-production to address some of the exposure problems in the final image.

Generally, front-lit scenes, where the sun is coming from behind you and the light is falling onto the scene, work best.

Lens choice

Your choice of lens needs careful consideration. The temptation is to use a wide-angle lens in order to minimise the number of individual shots needed. The problem with this is that some wideangle lenses display barrel distortion, creating an image which is very slightly convex at the edges. This makes it difficult for the photos to be stitched together successfully at the post-production stage, although the more recent versions of Lightroom and Photoshop software can deal with this better than previous versions.

Ideally, for shooting a panorama you should use a lens with a focal length of between 35mm and 135mm. I normally use a focal length as close to 50mm as possible as this prevents most distortions occurring. However, lenses as wide as 24mm can be used successfully with the more advanced software. Lenses longer than 50mm require a greater number of images to make up the panorama, but can produce a final image with a better width-to-height ratio.

Vertical or horizontal

Normally thought of as horizontal format, a panorama can also be shot vertically. The horizontal format requires fewer images to cover the same width of scene compared to shooting vertically, but often the result is a very thin panorama. Shooting the individual images vertically produces a final panorama which has the benefit of being taller.

Bear in mind that the actual number of images that are stitched together has little impact on the post-processing process, so for best results it is usually worth the small extra effort necessary to shoot a greater number images in vertical format.

Read the full article in the October-December 2021 issue of EOS magazine.