SPEED VS BEST PRACTICE

Best practice with landscape photography is to use a cable release, set Mirror Lockup (for DSLRs) and secure the tripod head to prevent shake. But this can cost valuable seconds between frames when shooting a mega-stitch like this, during which time clouds may move or the light may change. So, judge the conditions and decide whether maximum quality outweighs speed. Is it better to use a slower shutter speed and low ISO for maximum image quality, or to compromise and use a faster shutter speed with a higher ISO so you can shoot quicker without having to lock off the tripod?

01 SHOOT EXTRA AROUND EDGES

It can be difficult to visualize the aspect ratio of the final panorama, so shoot more around the edges than you think you need. Shoot frames further to the right, left, up and down to give more wiggle room for cropping and choosing an aspect ratio later.

03 USE YOUR LEVEL

Turn on the virtual horizon in your camera. It’s far more accurate than the bubble level in the tripod or nodal rail, and it can help you to shoot more quickly. You might also find it useful to turn on a rule of thirds grid to help you judge your overlaps.

02 HORIZONTAL OR VERTICAL?

The advice for panoramas is to shoot with a vertical camera, but this only really applies to single-row panos (and only if you need maximum resolution). For multi-row, you can shoot horizontally or vertically. An L-bracket is handy if you want to shoot vertically.

04 TRY AN AUTOMATED HEAD

A motorized panorama head like the Nodal Ninja Mecha lets you shoot multi-row panoramas with ease, especially 360-degree images. Many gimbals used for video, like the DJI Ronin RS2 here, have a panorama feature, although it’s difficult to correct for parallax.

05 MERGE IMAGES IN PHOTOSHOP

Now open Photoshop and go to File>Automate> Photomerge, then select your images and choose a layout. If you want even more resolution, consider running your images through the Super Resolution command in Camera Raw first (right-click>Enhance).

06 TRY PTGUI

A dedicated stitcher like PTGui gives more options. Sometimes segments that lack discernible detail, like blue skies, can cause issues. PTGui lets you manually add control points to link parts from different photos to identify parts of sky that match in different frames.