Hi I'm Doug McKinlay and you are watching AdoramaTV. As you can see from behind me
we're in Central London on the banks of the River Thames, great architecture,
great history, perfect for making
great panoramic pictures.
AdoramaTV presents, Stay Focused with Doug McKinlay.
Hi, I'm Doug McKinlay and you're watching AdoramaTV, today we're in Central London along
the banks of the River Thames,
what we're going to do today is look at some tips on how to get really good
panoramic pictures.
Now it's a perfect storm right now between
photographic equipment and computing software, in pre-digital days
getting panoramas often meant buying very expensive equipment
or spending hours and hours in a dark room trying to stitch exposures together
onto photographic paper, in essence we still do that
but we do it in the computer now where its a lot faster and a lot cleaner.
Now the first thing on any successful panoramic photo expedition
its finding your location, it could be anything really anything you find
interesting
as long as a nice long sweep. Now for us today we're on the banks of the River Thames
and behind me across river you've got Tower Bridge,
the Tower of London and the buildings of the city of London
this is going to be our subject for our first panoramic shot. So for sure
making panoramic pictures has become a lot easier in recent years better
cameras, better software etc, but one of the first things you've really got to
think about is you need a good solid stabilized position to shoot from,
which means a good tripod, preferably one that's got
a bubble, a levelling bubble on it, built into it and a good head,
either a pan head or like this one, a ball head.
Like all landscape photography, because let's face it, panoramic's are just big landscapes,
there's about three things you have to remember, first white balance can be set to auto
and you can always adjust in the computer, make sure everything us on manual
including the focus, shooting in manual mode, and manual focus,
just make sure you check the focus before you start shooting
and shoot in RAW, because with
RAW files we've got much, much more flexibility in the computer, little tiny
mistakes
easily fixed, jpegs; not so easy. Lets get shooting.
Now that your settings of course are going to be subject to the lighting
conditions,
and they will change. Now we want some decent depth of field right,
so because we're on a tripod, we can shoot on f/8 to f/11 I think, that will give us
enough death of field for a lot of clarity from
from the foreground to the infinity, and the shutter speed will be whatever it is
so for instance, for the shots it was f/11
at about to 1/60th of a second.
So that's our first series of pictures
for first time around
now the reason why I'm I'm shooting vertically rather than horizontal
like this, is sure, horizontal you're going to use less images
probably faster as well, so for quick panoramas
thats a good way of doing it, but the resolution will not be as
good as if you shoot them vertically int he way we just did.
So I suggest if you want really good files
big, big files you shoot vertically, also when it comes to
darkroom work that computer darkroom work, is that you need
some room to crop, because as this picture is stitched together in
Photoshop,
it's going to look a little jagged on the tops and bottom you're going to have to crop all that waste
out, and if you shoot vertically you can leave a little bit of air above and below
your picture which will give you room to crop better.
London in such a great city its always changing, the skyline seems to change every month,
as a photographer it's brilliant but I see a really good spot over by Tower Bridge
we're going to head over there now, let me put this stuff away.
So the next thing we have to think about is lens choices,
always the big question.
Now,
I tend to stay away from wide-angle lenses and doing panorama's
because they distort a lot and they can be really problematic once you're in the computer,
so my choices are; a 50mm
and probably short zoom, 24-70mm
up to an 80-200mm zoom lets get a little more control with these lenses.
Now,
in keeping with that I know I always bang on about using your tripod
as much as you possibly can, but sometimes its not possible
so handhelds, handheld panoramic's can be done
there's just a couple things you have to think about, keep in mind. We're going to choose
this 24-70mm, first and foremost really
is make sure you've got enough shutter speed to avoid any kind of camera shake
so you're looking at around 250 ish
in conjunction with that make sure you've got depth of field,
give yourself enough focus, depth of focus,
just before I continue with this shot, creating this panorama
I suggest you set everything to manual,
including your focus so set your focus in auto
and then switch it off to manual, that way your focus won't jump in and out
as you swing the camera around. Now you want to get nice and stable
so when you've got your camera cradled in your hands, firmly but gently, elbow's in
nice and tucked in give you some stability, legs; shoulder width apart
slightly bent but stable, making sure your shutter speeds are fast enough to avoid any
kind of camera shake,
making sure you've got enough depth of field to
give you lots of focus on picture, lets try it.
Just like when you're on a tripod, make sure
you overlap your frames, if you don't overlap the frames
the panorama won't work.
I just want to mention something about filters, take them off.
You don't need them on there, you can get away a skylight filter
but definitely if you've got a polarizer filter, take it off because it will just mess with the sky
and ND filters or grads, same thing, just get rid of them.
So one of my favorite panorama's I shot recently
was in Greenwich which is just down the river east of here,
where I live basically, the sky was blood red, I woke up one morning, looked at my bedroom window
and saw this amazing scene over Canary Wharf. Fortunately I've got a little skylight in
my loft
I climbed up there on the latter, dragged my camera up there in just started shooting
and it just turn out to be this fantastic panorama,
like eight or ten frames across the scene all the way from
the BT tower in the west of the city
all the way across to Canary Wharf, it was a blood red sky, it was pretty amazing.
So in the end these are just some tips and tricks
on how to create better panoramic pictures, it's by no means exhaustive
you've got to get out there yourself, try it out as much as you can
and just remember to learn from mistakes. So thats it from me
and I'm Doug McKinlay for AdoramaTV. Don't forget to subscribe to an AdoramaTV for more great
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