Ireland has many beautiful landscapes. However, the normal lens is 14mm on my m4/3 camera (28mm effective focal length, crop factor 2.0) which is not wide enough to take the photo in a single image. The only way to capture the entire landscape is to shoot several consecutive overlapping photos to create a panorama. I very much enjoy shooting panoramas as they allow me to capture a very wide field of view and produce a more dramatic photo.
To take a panorama, I position my body looking at the center of the photo I wish to capture. Then rotate my body to the left without moving my feet, twisting at my waist. I then shoot a series of overlapping photos, with at least 30-40% overlap.
On the Dingle Peninsula, I took a series of five photos from left to right.
After arriving home, I then use Capture One Panorama stitching routine. The results of which can be seen below:
The second example is The Burren, an area of about 116 sq-miles created over 340 million years ago by the receding glaciers made of limestone. The final results of which can be seen below:
The example below was taken at Dublin Castle.
In general, I shoot panoramas using aperture priority with my camera hand-held. Many websites recommend you use manual mode, so the exposure is the same for all the photos taken for a given panorama. In addition, they recommend the use of a tripod, so the horizontal plane of the photos are consistent. These are both very good suggestions, but my own experience is a good panorama photo can be accomplished without using manual mode and a tripod.
When I returned home, I combined (stitched) the photos using the panorama feature in any of the follow programs, Lightroom, Photoshop, Capture One and Affinity Photo.
If you don’t have Programs listed above, there are several other stand alone software programs that allow you to stitch together a series of photos. See Have Camera will Travel Link, for a list of available software for both MAC or PC. The list includes both free and for purchase software. I’ve not used many of the software programs so I won’t comment as to their features or ease of use.
I hope you will experiment with taking panoramas. They are fun to create.
Here are a few other panoramas I created in the past.
Here are several links providing additional information about shooting Panoramas.
How to Shoot Panoramic Photos
Panoramic Photography Tutorial
If you have any Questions please feel free to contact me
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