How to photograph Panoramas - Complete guide

welcome to this week's vlog in this video I show you what I consider to be the best way to shoot panoramix just Before we jump into this tutorial I'm very pleased to announce a Squarespace a sponsoring this video so if you're looking to build a website if you're looking to purchase a domain name or indeed if you need some web space that Squarespace calm is where you should be Squarespace com forward slash Gary Gogh will gain you at least 10% off whatever package you decide to sign up for right first of all I've established my shot and the shot I want to try and achieve in this particular image his well outside the capabilities of my 24 mil lens at its widest point hence the reason why I've chosen this now it's in the middle of the day it's bright sunlight there's not a cloud in the sky and it's gonna be a miserable shot but that it doesn't matter the quality of the shot in this instance doesn't matter it's about the technique on how I achieve my panoramic shots okay so before we do anything and this is very very important let's get our tripod set up and let's level our tripod it's really really important that we level a tripod now I've got a level actually on my tripod here and here that's actually on my tripod some people actually have a level on the tripod head now level in your tripod head isn't the same as level in your tripod so when I say level your tripod it's really important that you level your tripod if you have a tripod and it you haven't got a level on there then guess it and try and get it as close as you can but I would suggest that you you go out and buy a small attachment that you can buy for your tripod not for the top of your camera and not for the tripod head it has to be an attachment for your tripod I think the only cost about ten pound anyway remember preparation is key so let's just make some small adjustments here until that bubble is right in the middle of my level boom there you go so now my tripod is set and ready to go and the reason why we get this level is because we're going to introduce the camera then level the camera using the levels on the tripod head and then that simply means that the camera tripod the tripod is level and also the camera is level so when we do a sweep from one side to the other your camera will remain horizontal and it'll stay level and equal to the floor camera is on and ready to go the first thing I'm going to do I'm going to set my camera into portrait orientation not landscape orientation but portrait orientation and the reason being is because if your camera is in landscape orientation realistically we can make the pano as wide as we possibly as we want to it doesn't really matter but when you start going left to right then we'll end up with a very very narrow image and so what we prefer to do is shoot in portrait orientation and the reason being is because portrait orientation will give it's more floor and it'll give us more sky so that when we do a sweep we'll end up with a much taller image a much an image with a greater depth from floor to ceiling and that way it'll give us more to play with in post-production and it'll give us more options to crop as well I have a level on the back of my camera so I'm simply gonna fine-tune it until there now I've got my green line okay that's the preparation so far done tripod level tripod head with camera is now level that means camera in portrait orientation of course it means now when I sweep from left to right or right to left the camera will remain horizontal all the way exaggerating slightly but it doesn't go in that angle it goes nice and horizontal brilliant nice and simple so far right let's talk about the shooting modes in my opinion there is only one way to shoot a pan oh it's in manual now if you if you're not used to shooting in manual if manual is something you've never shot in before then just follow this technique you'd be surprised just how easy it is I'm gonna set my ISO to the base number the base number is the lowest number that your camera will allow in this particular camera it'll go to ISO 50 thank some cameras will ISO 64 but most cameras will certainly go down to ISO 100 but either way set your ISO to the lowest number it's called the base number now simply switch your aperture to f11 my ISO is at the base number the apertures f11 the reason why we set our aperture at f11 because f11 tends to be the most commonly used aperture for landscape photographers but for very good reason and the reason being because it's in the middle of our range of apertures it tends to be what we call the sweet spot so it'll be the sharpest of your lens but f11 also your aperture controls your depth of field and your aperture in this particular instance at f11 will ensure that pretty much everything from tippy-toes to as far as the eye can see it'll render it all in focus so there you go it's as simple as that you could pretty much run unless you're doing something very specific but you can pretty much shoot 99% of all your landscape shots in f11 just watch any vloggers watch any of my vlogs are more often than not unless I'm doing something specific with shutter speeds then my aperture is nearly always on f11 ok so now we've established that is our base number f11 all I now need to do is activate my light meter and adjust my shutter speed because the third element in our exposure triangle in this instance is a shutter speed and our shutter speed is what we will adjust now to ensure that we get enough light into the camera lens onto the sensor and it's it's done so so easily in live view you'll have a light meter on the back of the camera you'll also have a live view if you look in through your viewfinder then once we've done that there is also another way another method that we can use to fine-tune how much light that the camera receives onto the center will come on to that in a second so once again activate the light meter in Live View to activate the light meter all you need to do is to press your fire button halfway down you'll notice that my light meter here a little dot activates a little dot appears now all I need to do now is if I slow my shutter speed down you'll see the like me to move to the right-hand side that means there's too much light coming in if I increase my shutter speed that means less like will come in that means my light meter will now move to the left-hand side so all you no need to do is move it and adjust it until it goes in to the middle now the only thing you've got to be careful of is the light meter in my camera which is probably likely to be the same in your camera as well it's being read from the focus point my focus point is that perhaps they're in the middle that I'm moving as you can see now what you will notice is if I move my focus point into the sky my light meter now is indicating there's more light in the sky if I come down to the floor if I choose a darker area in the floor you'll see now my light meter has dropped down which means there's less light so in that instance is a couple things that we can do generally because there's more light in the sky than there is in the floor we tend to put neutral density filters on the front of the on the front II lens and that's what I'll do now that's just simply to balance the light if there's more like in the sky than there is on the floor so we'll do that and then I'll read meter ok so I'm going to add on to here a what's called a point nine which is a three stop neutral density soft filter and I'm just simply going to drop that filter down down down until the dark part you can see that not sure if you can see that but until the dark part actually drops on to the horizon like so so now if I reset my camera my cameras light meter there now when I move the focus point into the sky and then move it on to the floor it's pretty much the same if you used to post process in your work then don't worry about that too much as long as there's no what we call clipping in other words as long as there's no overexposure going on if there is then I always suggest underexposing okay so now we've done that with our light meter there's also another way that some some people prefer to use this other way I tend to use my light meter and then use this other way the other way of course I'm making reference to is your histogram so for me now to bring my histogram up on the screen like so that now indicates to me that it's pretty well exposed if I slow my shutter speed down more light is being introduced on the histogram and really a lot of people prefer to move the histogram further to the right to introduce more light as long as it doesn't clip so now on the right hand side here you can see that clipping has appeared that means there's overexposure in the shot so all we need to do is simply increase the shutter speed decrease the shutter speed until we get the histogram pretty much looking like that so it's just a case of playing around with your shutter speed and seeing how it affects your histogram and seeing how it affects your like meter but like I say the most important thing is is that the histogram that pretty much sit around about in the middle it can go to the right if you want to a lot of people tend to move move it to the right the reason being is because then we can claw more details out of the shadows but don't get too netted with that at the moment just get used to using your histogram okay so now that's established we're now ready to focus okay now let's very briefly talk to you about the focus in I'm going to use an automatic focus on my camera but I'm going to choose something a third of the way into the image now as a general rule I always just focus a third of the way into my image remember if you focus a third of the way into your image at f/11 cause aperture controls you depth of field pretty much I guarantee you everything will be in focus the only time I would ever focus stack or change my focus from a third of the way to the frame as if something sat really really really close to the camera if it's at really close to the camera then I would focus on the subject that sits really close to the camera and then I would take another shot focusing in on infinity or a third of the way into the frame okay but as it has a general rule and it is only a general but it's a rule that I abide by all the time when I shoot my landscapes unless something sits very close to the camera I always focus a third of the way into the frame even if there's nothing in the foreground rather than focus on infinity I always focus a third of the way into the frame so all I'm going to do here the trees which they don't form foreground interest but they are roughly a third of the way into the frame so let's take my focus point make sure my lens is set to automatic take it across let the camera do its thing is hunting and now it's focused a third of the way into the frame now this is the best part once its focused a third of the way into the frame simply select your focus and switch it to manual so now when I do a panoramic sweep from left to right the camera will no longer try and focus it's the same as what we call lock and reframe so focus a third of the way to the frame and simply switch your focus on your lens to manual dead simple so now if you think about this your lens is set to manual your camera is set to manual your tripod is level and your tripod head is lab that means in a manual fashion we're now in full control of this image when we take a sweep from left to right I guarantee you you are going to be given yourself 100% the best chance of achieving a perfectly exposed image and it's going to be completely consistent as you move across the horizon from left to right right to left or whatever you want that's it now ready to take some shots so all I need to do is point my camera I need to make sure that if I want my this tree hat overhanging here on the left hand side then I just want to make sure that I give myself plenty of breathing space so I'm going to shoot way way way past the left hand side and I'm going now going to take that shot set your timer to two seconds if you want to unless you've got an intervalometer or a trigger in which case and when I take my shot the camera's not even trying to hunt for a focus that simple once I've done that now what's really important is I'm going to move the tripod head but I want to overlap my previous shot by at least one third I've got a click lock system here on my tripod so I can twist it and of course for consistency doesn't really matter but for consistency I could twist one two three that's roughly overlapping the previous shot by one third one two three there you go one two three one two three and one two three there you go that's that panel in the back nice and simple okay so before I take the images and move them into Photoshop and post process them stitch them all together I'll show you how I do that in 30 seconds from now before that though just take a look at the images that I took this morning using this very same technique [Music] [Music] creating a Squarespace website is by far the easiest way to showcase yourself as a photographer online creating stunning websites is as simple as choosing a template and dragging and drop in your media stand out with a professional website portfolio or online store and if you use the code Squarespace comm forward slash Gary golf you'll get at least 10% off whatever package you decide to order and of course that will also include a 14-day free trial let's select these nine images let's open them up into Photoshop or Lightroom and let's create panoramic so let's grab our nine images let's hit enter and now the images will all open up in a pre photoshop screen the pre Photoshop screen that I use is called a CL which is Adobe Camera Raw now I'm not a Lightroom user hence the reason I'm using ACR if you've never seen this program before then it means you're probably a Lightroom user but don't worry because Adobe Camera Raw uses the same tools and it works in the same way as Lightroom does it's just laid out in a very very different way so watch let's click on the first image press ctrl + a to select them all we don't need to make any adjustments to our images at this present moment in time right mouse click and simply merge two panoramas and Photoshop will do its thing and it'll give us basically a an image of what it's likely to look like before it's been rendered and look how awesome that is if I uncheck this auto crop button just here by untick that you can see now that the image is nearly 100% / effect there's very little sky missing very little on the edges missing and very little of the floor missing and the reason why it looks this good is simply because of the prep work that we applied before taking this picture so there's a few things we can do with this image now before we actually open it up into Photoshop or Lightroom we can use the boundary wrap to fill in those spaces all the way up there so all those spaces are now gone or we can simply click on the auto crop or if you're a little bit more proficient in Photoshop and if you prefer at the moment it's at its widest and its highest or its tallest so you could actually just open this image as it is now in Photoshop and then fill in those missing areas using your clone stamp or using your content-aware tools plenty of tools for that in Photoshop but in this instance I'm simply going to press the auto crop button how awesome is that I can't stress enough the reason why it's this good is because of the prep work that we put in to take in this picture click on the merge button and Photoshop will now save it as a dot PNG file and a dot DNG file is Adobe's it's like Adobe's version of their raw file so it maintains all of the information and details that you'd find in your raw files actually in the DNG file and there we go perfect so all we need to do now is just simply make the basic adjustments hit C for my crop tool let's have a look okay I'm going to go for quite a tight letterbox orientation crop on that just a very slight adjustment there I'm gonna move the edge in there that's the camera that you see here on the left hand side that I was using to video myself at the time but I don't need all of that in and you want to make sure this area here with that tree is in I don't mind the one on the left-hand side but of course that's entirely up to you if I move this crop closer in it means that this area of land jutting out here falls better on the rules of the and in terms of my adjustments if I come up to this tool here my lens Corrections and I get a click my box to remove any chromatic aberrations and enable my profile correction so any ailments with my lens then this program will we'll simply fix it nothing any more exciting than that if I come down to my main screen here if I grab my highlight slider move it to the left hand side you've probably seen this done a million times push my slider or my shadow slide it to the right hand side and maybe my da's maybe 10 maybe add a little bit of d haze on there not too much and that is looking pretty good so once that's done I can simply click on open image and the image now opens up into Photoshop or opens up into Lightroom if you're a Lightroom fan but the image will open up for me in Photoshop and then all I simply do using the layers go through cleaning up chardy up add any effects I need to add a vignette in etc etc and there you go that's my piano shots it's all done so automatically for you this becomes second-nature so so quickly and literally it takes 30 seconds to create up while a 9 image panel for instance so it's super super quick the one tip I will give you is that if you intend to shoot multiple shots to create a panel on water then a good tip is to use a very long shutter speed I'm a fan of very long shutter speeds anyway but with a flat water what I call ice-skating rinks then you'll find the images will stitch together a lot easier one of the anal ailments that you do find with Photoshop is that it does struggle to connect even the most basics of things like waves for instance so just be mindful of that but for your landscapes perfectly fine that concludes this tutorial if you enjoyed it give me a thumbs up and click the subscribe button if you're not already a subscriber hit that notification bell as well I've got plenty plenty more tutorials on the way Cheers

Channel: Gary Gough

Views: 90,185

Keywords: photography, landscape photography, panorama, How to photograph Panoramas, how to, tips, making a panorama, tricks, lightroom, Photoshop, photoshop tutorial, landscape panos, landscape panoramas, create panoramas, photography ideas, photography tips, learn photography, gary gough, landscape photography tips, landscape photography settings

Id: q6NSxeENdgI

Length: 21min 36sec (1296 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 29 2019