Fun With Panarammas

Harpa Opera House Reykjavik, LX100 auto pano hand held. The off verticals are as per construction of the building.

I recently completed a trip to Svalbard, Iceland and various European cities. Along the way several subjects presented themselves demanding to be shot as a panorama, or panarammaas the Americans in our group liked to say it.

Both my cameras, a Panasonic FZ1000 and an LX100 were well up to the task. The results were interesting, sometimes a bit weird but always fun.

I used both the in camera auto panorama function with each camera and also used Photoshop to stitch together multiple frames. Both methods were mostly successful.

Practice and good technique strongly influenced the number of keeper results.

Skallafels, Iceland  LX100 auto pano hand held

Hints and tips--Auto stitching in camera    

* Does your camera not have this feature ?  Sell it.

* Are you considering the purchase of a camera without auto panorama function ?  Stop right there. Don’t buy it.  I am not joking. There is really no excuse for manufacturers which fail to include this feature on expensive cameras when it is available on smart phones and compacts.

A well implemented auto panorama function is fun and capable of making surprisingly good photos.

* In the setup process configure the camera to be held in portrait orientation for horizontal panoramas. This gives more height in each image than landscape orientation, thus more flexibility in subject choice.

* In the cameras I have used, you can tilt the camera up or down quite a bit and the software will somehow figure out how to join all the frames to make a good photo.  Experiment with this.

* The camera will lock  focus and exposure settings when you half press the shutter. You can do this with the camera pointed at any part of the final frame. If the output JPG is over or under exposed, try locking exposure on a different part of the scene. Hold the shutter button at the half press position while you move the camera to the start position.

* Practice improves results. No tripod is required outdoors. Indoors will see slower shutter speeds which might require a tripod.   Practice swinging the camera round at a steady speed. If you go too fast or slow artefacts will become numerous or the camera will stop recording.

Practice holding the camera steady and level side–to-side.

Subject elements very close to the camera provide the most difficulty. Try to avoid these.

Landmannalaugar, Iceland  LX100 handheld auto pano  That hill on which I am standing really is green and not a blade of grass or moss in sight.

Hints and tips – Stitching in Photoshop

* Set focus, aperture, shutter speed and ISO sensitivity manually so they stay exactly the same for every frame.  Experiment with the exposure settings. Likely some frames will be over exposed, some under. You can bracket after a fashion by making sequences at different exposure settings.

* A tripod is not usually required outdoors but one may be advisable indoors.

* The camera can be tilted somewhat up or down. The software these days can handle this. Try to keep it level side to side though.

* As with the in camera auto pano function subject elements very close to the camera may cause problems.

* The latest versions of Camera Raw can make a RAW panorama which is very welcome. You end up with a fully adjustable stitched RAW file.

* If  CR baulks and says it can’t make a RAW merge, just use the old method which is:

Bridge>Select>Tools>Photoshop>Photomerge> Follow the prompts. That usually works.

* With the merged file open in Photoshop I often use (Select) Edit>Transform>Warp    to push and pull the image around until it looks right.

Sometimes it just doesn't work. Try again, see below

Amsterdam Centraal  LX100 hand held auto pano
I had six tries at this. The crowd of people walking about made panorama acquisition problematic to put it mildly. This version has had some tweaking in Transform>Warp  but the towers have still ended up different in height. Some of the people have had their anatomy rearranged.

Summary    The panorama format gives added presence and impact to many subjects.  Modern technology makes the production of good quality panoramas easier than ever, in camera or in Photoshop (and other photo editing software).

Appendix August 2015: Panasonic Panorama Menu settings

Panasonic M43 ILCs and FZLCs have had the auto panorama function for a few years. It gets better with each new batch of models. The new G7, GX8 and FZ300 will all have the latest version of panorama.

Here are some Menu settings hints derived from practice with the FZ1000 and LX100.  I expect the new cameras will be similar but maybe not exactly the same.

Several posters on user forums have asked about making horizontal panoramas with the camera in portrait orientation.

The cameras will make either vertical or horizontal panoramas in either landscape or portrait orientation. (4 options).

The following is based on the FZ1000. 

1. Set Quality to JPG Fine. (not RAW+JPG). 

2. Find the place where Panorama is accessed.  On the FZ1000 it is under the [Scn] icon on the Mode Dial. On the LX100 it is in the Drive Mode menu.  

Set Panorama.

3. Press Menu/Set  and enter Rec Menu. Scroll to Panorama settings. (This tab is greyed out if the Mode Dial is at PASM)

4. Press Menu/Set, up comes the [Direction] tab.

Press Menu/Set, now see 4 options. Select the bottom one with the arrow pointing up. This looks wrong but press on.

5. Exit the Menu.

6. To make the panorama, hold the camera in portrait orientation and sweep left to right.

Bravo !