As we planned our adventure to photograph the fall foliage of Flagstaff, Warren decided he wanted to capture a large, detailed panoramic of the Inner Basin Trail aspen trees. He wanted this to be a high-quality image that could be printed large for display. It's simple to take a wide shot and size it to your desired panoramic ratio, but in doing this you lose some quality. He has been eyeing the Really Right Stuff Pano gear, but it's at the higher end of the budget. We enjoy showing our readers/followers what is available at a price that may be more affordable to masses and the resulting images that can be created. This is one of the panoramic images Warren created this day and we are going to share how he created this image.
This image was created with 63 images (bracketed sets of 3, 1 stop apart). Essentially, Warren took 3 shots of 21 frames (correct exposure, 1 stop over, and 1 stop under). He then pulled these images into LR, clicked on all the exposures he wanted to use, right-clicked and chose Photo Merge/HDR Panorama. As you can imagine it takes a little while for LR to process the final image, but it resulted in this 54 MB HDR (High Dynamic Range) Panoramic image that maintained the scale of the landscape. You can see this is little to no distortion that would have been evident in a wide shot cropped down to the desired panoramic ratio. Some things to keep in mind when shooting to create a merged HDR Panorama is that you need to:
1) Each set of bracketed images needs to contain the same amount of images. For example, Warren chose 3 stops of exposure, so each frame he captured needed to have 3 stops of exposure.
2) Those 3 images need to have the same exposure difference. As mentioned, Warren chose 0, +1, -1 for all frames captured. This process would not work if some of the frames, for instance, had 0,+1.5, -1.5.
3) If for any reason your exposures do not meet all the criteria to merge an HDR panorama, Adobe will advise you that it will merge in a non-HDR panorama if you choose instead.
4) Level your camera on the tripod in all directions you will be shooting (360 degrees)
5) Using the Nodal Rail allows the camera to be positioned to rotate where the images does not move as you rotate the camera. This is called the Nodal Point of the lens. You can find this by positioning the lens over the pivot point of the Panning base to find the position where two inline vertical subjects (trees) do not move position as the camera rotates.
6) Shooting is a vertical position allows you to record greater amount of data for the final images. The L bracket for your camera allows you to go vertical on the Nodal Rail.
7) Shoot your images overlapping, He used 5 degree movements on the Panoramic Panning Base.
We hope this post helps you next time you set out to create a panoramic image in which you hope to maintain scale of the landscape and create a high-quality image. Until next time, Explore, Create and Do Good!
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