Long Exposure Panoramas

Communities Visual Arts & Design
1

Hello,

I am planning a trip over to London this weekend for some photography and I was planning on getting some nice long exposures of the river/cityline with my new ND1000 "Lee Big Stopper"

I don't do lots of panoramas personally and I was wondering if anyone had ever don a long exposure panorama and has any shooting tips and workflow suggestions?

I knows there are some better photo mergers out there other than photoshop CC so if any one uses a better one for complex scenes, preferably that plugs into photoshop directly.

@smileytown i know you do a fair bit of this?

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I've always just used photoshop. I think its more in the way you shoot it. Being sure to cover your gaps and using a panoramic tripod head or best you can handheld. I've been able to create a few okay ones that don't look all that much like panoramas, but rather just super high resolution shots. Even some HDR pano's.

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Yeah true, I generally allow at least 25-50% overlay of each image

Yeah I have a nice Manfrotto gimbal head tripod, Cool, yeah I like the super high res shots, keeping same aspect ratio :) Like example 2-3 :)

can you remember any specifications of shot 3? ow many shots and how are they composed? I.e 3 portraits across or 3 across 3 up?

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It was horizontal shots, each being a 3 bracket +/-1stop. I think It may have been 4 rows high. Maybe like 3 1/2. and 4-5 shots wide. I don't have any special tripod heads. I just make do with my vanguard SBH-50 ball head modded with an arca swiss plate. You can also tell that shot was back when I had an obsession with punching the blacks a lot. I do remember on all of those images using the warp tool just a little bit to make it look less warped lol.

Stitching is one thing that I need to find a good linux alternative for that I haven't even started to look for. Currently trying to figure everything else out.

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I normally overlap 30% on each side of the image. So I end up using only the very center of the frame.

If you're shooting with a very wide angle, 20mm and under, parallax errors become less of an issue and you can generally get away without using a panohead/sliding rail. I found that shooting panos in landscape mode works better when you have more horizontal lines in the composition like the horizon. Portrait mode panos would be better for vertical lines like architecture or cityscapes. Either way, just make sure your tripod is leveled properly and the stitch shouldnt be a problem. Also, with long exposures, make sure you use a remote shutter or put it on a timer.

Software-wise, Microsoft ICE is a good free stitching software. I've used it quite a few times before and it's extremely fast and stitches really well. Only issue is that I do see some loss in image quality when exporting the final stitch. If you want the all out best stitching software, PTGui is probably the most advanced but is quite annoying to use as many things are hidden in sub menus.

Personally, I use AutoPano Giga. It's the stitching software that comes with Gigapan panoramic units. It works a treat but does cost quite a bit.

What focal length will you be shooting at for the panos?

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ha Im going throught that phase right now ;D

Cool, so a bit of a HDR, looks great.

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Thanks for the advice mate,

I would like to invest more time/money into perfecting panormas in the future, I will look into the software you suggested :)

Thanks for the advice on the composition techniques

Again many thanks for your advice

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I've used some freeware photo mergers, but depending on what camera you have, your stock software may provide some sort of merger. Google photos can also create panoramic photos, but may be lower quality depending on what settings and storage space you have