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Carol and I like the wide open places. Places like the tops of mountains where you can see the curvature of the earth. We also like to share our experiences through our photography – guess you might call us “serious amateur photographers”.  It’s somewhat impossible to do justice to the big places with single snapshots; combining multiple photos into panoramas can work.

I often have discussions with friends and family about cameras. Ideally it would be nice to have a good digital SLR, with full manual modes and so forth. However, my bottom line is always “the best camera is the one you have with you”. This is what keeps us in the dust proof / water proof / point-and-shoot regime. We can take them anywhere (wet canyons, oceans, wind-driven sand on dunes, in the rain, etc.) and have hardly a care about them continuing to operate.

The (current, no doubt being solved somewhere) downside of this class of camera (small, waterproof, point-and-shoot) is that they do not have real manual modes. Therefore, it’s unlikely that multiple exposures (like for a panorama) will be consistent enough that there will not be a noticeable difference in contrast / lighting / color / etc. The problem this creates is that – in the past – when stitching pictures together to form a panorama, those parameters needed to be consistent across all the photos in the panorama.

Convict Lake, February 2010. Arriving at the scene, and climbing down into the lake’s outlet area, I was struck by the raw beauty. I took a hand held panorama, then thought “why not give this opportunity the chance it deserves” and went and fetched the tripod. I set up the tripod on top of the thin layer of ice on the outlet and took a series of shots in landscape mode (camera horizontal). I looked through the pictures, looked at the scene and noticed that in landscape mode I was not getting the full reflections of the peaks in the water. I reshot the entire scene in portrait mode / infinite focus with plenty of overlap between shots.

At home, as I was catching up with my Google Reader, there was an article about “the best panorama stitching software” the writer had tried out. I followed the link, downloaded a couple of trial versions and quickly converged on the same answer – and now own a copy of PTGui Pro.

I let PTGui do its magic with the raw, unedited photos. I’m really happy with the resulting panorama. If you want to appreciate the technical accomplishment of PTGui, pan and zoom around in the picture and look for errors in the skyline or water where the pictures have been merged. I did this and can’t find anything.

A few tips if you want to do your own awesome panoramas:

1. Use a level tripod – if possible.
2. Force your camera to make the fewest possible choices – i.e., force infinite focus, single white balance, whatever you can accomplish. Read The Friendly Manual.
3. Lighting will be important – sometimes you won’t have a big choice (for instance, we were somewhat surprised to even make it to the top of Split Mountain, let alone plan for lighting), but if you have a choice, use the best lighting.
4. Be sure to get enough overlap in your pictures – some writers recommend 1/3 of the scene or so on each side.
5. You decide – lug around a heavy, fragile digital SLR and use lightweight panorama software, or carry a lightweight camera and use heavyweight panorama software…

Here’s wishing you the best in your photographic endeavors!

Namaste.

~Rick

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