Panoramas?

[princer7]

I am attempting my first panorama and am having a difficult time with photomerge in Photoshop. I took the pictures this afternoon with a Nodal Ninja 3 and a Canon 20D with a 28mm lens. Even though I tried to take the pictures quickly, the sky is still different colors between some of the shots. Is there a good way to stitch this together that I am missing?

[boxofrocks]

Do a google search on "autostitch". It's free, and does a pretty good job.

[CobyPhoto]

Whenh you shoot a pano, you need to meter, then set the camera MANUALLY. Auto White Balance, exposure etc. will change even if you try and take the photos quickly. That is why you end up with a slightly different color and exposure for each frame you are merging.

Try again and set you camera manually. You should find that the photo merges rather easily with no color problems.

CJ

[jeffkohn]

Did you lock exposure (or use manual exposure) to ensure the same exposure between each shot? If not you can get variations from one shot to the next, because the camera's meter can change its mind about optimal exposure as the composotion changes. Also make sure you're not using auto white balance.

Your shots may still be useable though. Many of the commercial pano stitching applications available can blend the shots as long as the difference in exposure is not too great (they also have other capabilities that go beyond Automerge).

I have experience with two applications: Autopano Pro and PTGUI. Autopano Pro works well on some panos and does a pretty good job of blending exposure differences, but the stitching is completely autmatic so if it doesn't get it right there's no way for you to overrride. PTGUI is a bit more flexibile, you can align the images yourself using "control points" to get a more seamless stitch on difficult images. It can also blend exposure differences, and seems to be a bit faster than Autopano Pro.

Both applications have demos, might want to give one of them a try and see how it does with your pano.

[darktiger]

does any of them allow you to do it using raw files?

[jeffkohn]

Originally Posted by darktiger

does any of them allow you to do it using raw files?

Some may, most don't. I wouldn't recommend it because chances are their RAW convertor won't be as good as what you normally use. Just convert to 16-bit TIFF and stitch from that.

[princer7]

Thank you for the suggestions and software recommendations. The Autopano Pro was my favorite. I did everything wrong with the camera this go around. The subject was not the best but the powerlines were a good trainer to see if I had any distortions with the panorama. Here are the results with the bad lighting.

[BobbyC]

That's pretty good. I just bought a NN3 as well but haven't had much time to work with it. I tried a pano of my office and I used Realviz, it auto stitched together nicely.

You should go down to hippy hollow and take a nice pano for us to evaluate. :o)

[EOC_Jason]

Besides doing them in photoshop, I've also used the app that comes on the Canon CD to stitch together panoramas...

[TxManx]

LIke EOC_Jason mentioned, on the Canon 20D CD, they include Photostitch...

Might not be as good as autopano did for you, but it's free...:)

[Bill]

The problem may be that the sky actually has different colors. This is particularly a problem in early morning or late afternoon skies. Although variation is real, it often doesn't look like what you perceived it to be and you might want to adjust it.

I have also seen recommendations to shoot more components with moderate teles than fewer with wides. Better correction in the lenses, supposedly. Many wides have obvious fall-off on the corners. May be OK in a single shot, big pain with a pano because each component pic has 4 corners.

Free Unasked For Tip: Your panos don't have to be 1 by X, they can be 2, 3, or whatever by X. Many stitchers can handle that.

Enjoyed your pic.

Bill

[princer7]

My second attempt was much better than the first. Lighting was more uniform. I tried the 2x with great results as well. Hardest part was the time it took for the computer to stitch everything together. I'll try a different lens on my next outing with the Nodal Ninja.