how to photograph panoramas

There are just a few things to keep in mind when shooting panoramas and I've summarized them here. You may want to read the equipment and software sections before actually attempting your shot.

overview

Panoramas are created from a series of overlapping images which cover an entire scene, these images are "stitched" together into a geometrically encoded intermediate image, most commonly an equirectangular projection of the complete scene. A number of derivative images can be created from this intermediate image by applying geometric transformations upon it.

1. Collect your equipment.
   • Camera capable of manual exposure and manual focus, with a wide angle lens; I use a Nikon D200 with a Nikkor 10.5mm lens.
   • Sturdy tripod
   • Panoramic tripod head calibrated to the nodal point of your camera/lens combination; I use a Nodal Ninja 3.
   • Cable release; I use a Nikon infrared remote.
2. Locate your tripod so that the scene "works" in all directions; I position the camera about 1.5m above the ground for most shots.
3. Using manual exposure and manual focus, shoot the entire scene with overlap between shots; I shoot a scene horizontally, then one straight up, one straight down, and one handheld shot straight down where the tripod was.
4. Stitch the images together into composite image using Photoshop, Hugin or PTgui; I like PTgui for its ability to successfully stitch sloppily positioned image series.
5. Convert the stitched image to Flash or HTML5 for interactive viewing or virtual tours

equipment

I use this equipment:

• Nikon D200 w/10.5mm lens
• Nodal Ninja 3
• Gitzo carbon fiber tripod
• Benro carbon fiber tripod
• Nikon infrared cable release

Nikon mounted on a Nodal Ninja 3

software

I use this software:

• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
  File management and workflow
• PTgui
  Stitching and image fusion
• Pano2VR
  Equirectangular image manipulation and VR export
• Adobe Photoshop
  Post production editing
  • Flexify 2 plugin
    Hyperbolic projections

image sequences

A series of overlapping images are stitched together to create an equirectangular projection from which other derivative images are created.

Stitched equirectangular image

mirror ball tripod cap

You can cover-up that nadir in your panorama without using complicated scripts, by following these easy steps. I'm using Photoshop to create a mirror ball nadir cap, but any image editor which supports layers can be used to produce this effect.

Step1 - Duplicate your equirectanglar image on a new layer

Step 2 - Place a guide just above your tripod on the top layer

Step 3 - Select the area above the guide

Step 4 - Use the "Free Transform" tool to create your tripod cap by selecting the top-center handle and dragging it all the way to the bottom of your image.

You're done. If you place text just below the guide it will appear around the edge of your tripod cap.