Shooting Panoramas

I have recently watched video tutorial by Gavin Hoey about shooting panoramas and thought I would give them a try. Up to now I was not really into panoramas, sort of left them for later. He made it look so easy, and now having been inspired by Gavin I headed towards Vienna city centre, its old town and started to shoot...

Vienna Hofburg Panorama stitched from 7 vertical images

You need extremely wide and interesting building or structure. What could be better than Hofburg and Parliament, perhaps Schönbrunn but I will shoot it the other day...
I was after specific oval distorted effect to bring some extra visual impact. I stood in front of the central point of the structure and looked from left to right. It was supposed to be almost 180 degrees panorama. You need series of images that overlap by at least 30%. More overlapping areas will help to generate better and smoother panorama.

7 vertical images used for panorama

I metered the central point, which would be the largest and sharpest on final image. Then switched from aperture priority to manual setting values from the meter. In my case it was 1/160s, f/8, ISO 100. It was sunny day... Set the focal length to 35mm making sure central spot perfectly fills vertical frame with some room on top and bottom. Yes, I shot panorama in vertical mode. All pictures must have the same settings!
Then do a test run from left to right (or other way around) without actually taking pictures. Just practice the move and concentrate on the edges that should overlap on subsequent frames. To cover 180 degrees with good common sections I needed between 6-7 pictures.
Position yourself, take a long breath and shoot, 1,2,3,...7.
Done.

Then just in case shoot the same series again, and perhaps even 3rd time. Maybe during 2nd and 3rd run change some settings like one stop up or down. At home you will be able to choose the best series.

Vienna Hofburg Entrance stitched from 6 vertical images

Individual photos used for final result above

Post-processing.
I downloaded all the photo into Lightroom and applied standard development settings like sharpening, clarity, little contrast. They are all set as default in my catalogue. Then I selected those 6 or 7 pictures that belonged to individual panorama series and corrected the white balance making sure they all will have same colour temperature. In this case I simply entered 5500K - Daylight. On the other hand this could have been done in the camera itself prior to shooting.
Having them selected use menu option Photo | Edit In | Merge to Panorama in Photoshop. Lightoom will now export the files into Photoshop and will execute panorama script. Pop-up window will appear asking for stitching method. I used Auto. Then be patient, 7 files 21 megapixels each will cause your PC to work quite heavy, it will take few minutes before you see first results.
Of course the same process can be initiated directly from Photoshop if you do not use Lightroom. Just as well other software can be used. I am happy with what I have, and must say photoshop does fantastic job stitching images.

Austrian Parliament

Individual photos used for final result above

At last the image will appear on the screen and it will be massive in size. It must be cropped and adjusted to individual taste. I played with tonal adjustments and curves and saved and sent back to Lightroom where I added final visual effect by using Faded Photo development preset published by Bryan Wheeler. They can be downloaded from Adobe website - http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?event=extensionDetail&extid=1651019. Tweaked it a bit by removing slightly vignetting and increased saturation.
And you can see effects. I might do other versions late on as well. For now I like those.

So it is quite easy, give it a go.

Cheers
Jerzy