Panoramic ideas 8/8/2008

Technique

The camera (Canon EOS 5D with Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens) was oriented in portrait format on a levelled Bogen 3021BN Tripod & 3047 Head. I then panned the scene, selecting a 55mm focal length and angling the camera upward a little in order to capture the top of the clocktower of the main building (Fuld Hall). Note - No special parallax eliminating panoramic head was used.
The camera was set to Aperture Priority mode at f16 in order to obtain a sizeable depth of field. Expoure for different parts of the scene was examined by panning the camera and depressing the shutter button halfway. Since there was a breeze ISO 320 was selected in order to obtain a managable shutter speeds and I settled on 1/80s as the fastest speed from the panning exposure analysis in order to avoid blowing any highlights.
The camera was set to Manual exposure mode and f16 + 1/80s were dialed in as the chosen exposure.
Sharp focus was obtained on the front of Fuld Hall as it was the closest object I really cared about. The lens was switched to manual focus in order to lock-in the focal point. As an exercise I computed the hyperfocal distance (HD) as 37 feet using DOFMaster for PalmOS on a PDA device. I could see that the building was around 100 feet away and so I knew I had acceptable depth of field.
A series of six photographs were taken using a cable release, rotating the camera between shots and ensuring an overlap of somewhere between 10% and 20%. Mirror lockup was not engaged as at 1/80s it is not technically important. IS on the lens was left on as the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS lens is capable of detecting that the camera is on a tripod.
The RAW files were highlighted in Adobe Bridge and opened simultaneously in Adobe Camera RAW. Settings were adjusted on one of the images and then those settings were equalized between the images. Note: In order to equalize White Balance it has to be set to Custom.
Image Processor was used to create a JPEG from each RAW file (preserving the Adobe RGB (1998) color space) and these JPEG’s were processed to create a cylindrical panorama using Panorama Maker. The final panoramic image was saved as a JPEG.
The panoramic image was opened in Photoshop CS2, reassigned an Adobe RGB profile (as Panorama Maker seemed to have removed it), cropped to neaten up the edges and sharpened using PhotoKit Sharpener set to digital high resolution, medium sharpen.
Image Processor was used to save versions of the image for web use according to this post.
TIPS

Always capture in RAW so that you can equalize the image settings (exposure, shadow, contrast, brightness, saturation, white balance) between images before creating TIFF or JPEG for your chosen panoramic creation software.
Work with TIFF images as opposed to JPEG if you intend to do any serious processing of the final image Photoshop; that is to say beyond cropping and sharpening.
Use as long a focal length as possible. I’d like to have been farther back and used something like 80mm but it wasn’t possible here. With the 55mm focal length I had to angle the camera up and this is evident in the final image.
Watch for vignetting when using wide angle. If you do have to use a short focal length use as large an aperture as possible to get the depth of field you want in order to minimize vignetting..
Don’t use a polarizer as it will create contrast differences at the image boundaries.

This information can be sourced from: www.sns.ias.edu/~jns/wp/2006/01/ 22/a-technique-for-digital-panoramic-photography/ - 20k