Panoramic problems

[Blooddraken]

A friend of mine directed me to this site.

I have a Nikon D3100. It does not have a panoramic function. To combine the photos, I used Photoshop Elements 10.

In taking this picture, I set my camera to Manual, then after setting the initial settings, I did not touch the controls. There was no change in light. There was some cloud cover, but not enough for this. Two other panoramic photos I did not even 50 feet away turned out perfectly.

This is the folder containing the messed up panorama and the individual photos I took for it:

http://s9.photobucket.com/albums/a52/wolf51777/personal%20photography/Mistakes/

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Not even my photography teacher could figure it out.

here are two panoramas I did not even 20 minutes before that turned out excellently:

http://s9.photobucket.com/albums/a52/wolf51777/personal%20photography/panoramas/

[BartvanderWolf]

In taking this picture, I set my camera to Manual, then after setting the initial settings, I did not touch the controls. There was no change in light. There was some cloud cover, but not enough for this. Two other panoramic photos I did not even 50 feet away turned out perfectly.

Hi,

Hard to say why it went wrong, but according to the EXIF data the exposure times vary so apparently the exposure was not manually fixed.

Despite that, a reasonable stitch can be made. It can still be improved by using noise reduction on the underexposed frames, and various other tweaks, but that would be best done on the larger original files, and maybe with a more dedicated panostitcher than Elements.

Cheers,
Bart

[Blooddraken]

I would thank you, but I have no idea what you just said lol. I am really new to all of this.

[IanBrowne]

I would thank you, but I have no idea what you just said lol. I am really new to all of this.

are you new to photography or just new to panoramas?

Panos are pretty complicated things when all is considered and how the hell PS works it out I can never understand.

This is how I do them; and often with a Canon G12 P+S camera.

>I lock the focus to a suitable point
>set the exposure to AV. Now that is different to how most/some do it I believe
>generally I hand hold the camera. Again different to some and it does take a bit of experience.
>I overlap heavily to compensate for any changes in the light.
> then i leave it the PSCS3 to sort out which it does very well most of the time.
>sometime I use transform (not sure if that is in PSE10) to straighten out any horizon or building problems.

If I have too many images for the Dell lappy to handle I just do a few images at a time. that is I will join the first 4 or 5 files into one image and then the next four or five files in one image and so on. i then join those images. Takes time but it's easier for lappy to do it.

Now back to my first question.....if you are new to photography I would suggest you gain more experience with camera before playing with panoramas. Don't make photography harder than it needs to be. photography can be  a long never end journey so take your time.

One problem i see with your images is there was  not enough space left around the subject. Photograph with a  vertical camera and have plenty of space at the top and bottom as there will some cropping in the final image. and generally it's better to use a longer lens than a short lens.

have fun.

[Blooddraken]

I'm rather new to photography in general.

The panoramic was a class assignment for the digital photography class I'm taking. My teacher saw the pic and he couldn't figure it out either.

What I'm thinking, due to a similar issue with another pan, is the lighting changed between shots. Took a pan of a tall tree. Top and bottom were bright, while the middle looked grayed out like the church photo here. The sun was directly behind the tree, which, at the time, I thought would make for an interesting effect.

[IanBrowne]

I'm rather new to photography in general.

The panoramic was a class assignment for the digital photography class I'm taking. My teacher saw the pic and he couldn't figure it out either.

What I'm thinking, due to a similar issue with another pan, is the lighting changed between shots. Took a pan of a tall tree. Top and bottom were bright, while the middle looked grayed out like the church photo here. The sun was directly behind the tree, which, at the time, I thought would make for an interesting effect.

good to see you doing a photography course.

Try my way and see how you get on. Pick any unimportant subject like the house across the road. Limit the files to about 4 or 5 while learning the tricks.

[k bennett]

Your exposures are all over the place. Your camera was in Aperture Priority mode set to f/36. The first image I looked at was at ISO 1250, and the second at ISO 3200, which strongly implies that you have Auto ISO turned on. And you were at f/36 at 1/4000 sec in the first frame, and f/36 at 1/500 in the second. That's more than a 4-stop difference in exposure once you take into account the different ISO as well as the change in aperture and shutter speed. That's why one image is almost black and the other is closer to a good exposure. The final stitched image contains photos with wildly different exposures, which is why it looks like it does.

The exposures are different because the camera was trying to compensate for the different light levels in each individual photo. A photo with a lot of sky looks very bright, so the camera chooses to darken the image, while the photo of the center of the cathedral looks darker, and the camera tries to increase the exposure to brighten it.

A couple of suggestions:

Put the camera on Manual mode, and set the ISO to a single value, NOT auto-ISO. Now, there are many combinations of ISO, aperture, and shutter speed that will give you the same "correct" exposure -- you just have to pick the best combination for the situation. Full daylight landscapes work well at ISO 100 or 200, apertures of around f/8, and whatever shutter speed gives the proper exposure. As the light levels drop, raise the ISO to compensate. On an overcast day like this, I'd probably shoot at ISO 400. For a stitched panoramic image, you'll want to make the exposure for the main subject, and keep that same exposure for all the other images in the pano. (For now, anyway.) Shooting in Manual ("M") mode makes this very easy, as the camera just shoots at whatever settings you have chosen, not thinking for itself. Shoot a photo of the cathedral, check it on the back of the camera, and if needed adjust your shutter speed, then take another test photo. Once you have your exposure worked out, shoot the individual photos that will make up the panoramic.

Oh, and avoid f/36, that's far too small an aperture for this camera. I wouldn't want to shoot smaller than f/11.

Good luck. If you reshoot this assignment, please post the results.

[Tony Jay]

Perhaps I might be called a party pooper for saying this but I believe that the OP should get properly comfortable and intimate with his camera before taking on panoramas.

There is an excellent book written by Bryan Peterson 'Understanding Exposure, 3rd Edition: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera',  ISBN-13: 978-0817439392 that I highly recommend to individuals learning photography for the first time.

Regards

Tony Jay

[Tony Jay]

I'm rather new to photography in general...The panoramic was a class assignment for the digital photography class I'm taking. My teacher saw the pic and he couldn't figure it out either....

Thats a REAL worry - the problem was actually very simple to figure out.

[Ellis Vener]

I ran the four photos with the best eyeballed exposure matches through PTGui Pro 9.1.3 and the result is attached. What it appears to me is that you did not shoot enough frames. Otherwise the montage is good

[Ellis Vener]

"here are two panoramas I did not even 20 minutes before that turned out excellently:

http://s9.photobucket.com/albums/a52/wolf51777/personal%20photography/panoramas/"

Unless the ground really rolls like that and the builders did not make the walls vertical, to be honest these did not turn out "excellently".

[IanBrowne]

I ran the four photos with the best eyeballed exposure matches through PTGui Pro 9.1.3 and the result is attached. What it appears to me is that you did not shoot enough frames. Otherwise the montage is good

i used to make that mistake......as i said above I now overlap heavily

the other problem is not enough space was left around (usually top and bottom) the subject


And k bennet>> that was a great reply>>>good observations by you also