Creating a panorama is one of the best ways to capture landscapes. As you take pictures from a more extensive scenery, it becomes easier to illustrate your physical view in the photograph. Even though many software makes it easy to merge your photos into panoramas, it’s still vital to understand how to optimize landscapes and create fabulous pictures for your panoramic tours of Europe.

Creating fantastic panoramic pictures requires some strong field skills alongside post-processing skills. We’ve mapped out ten excellent tips to use when taking panoramic tours and travels to ensure you create great panoramas. It’s worth while to note here that some people call panoramic pictures 3d pictures or 360 photos. For the sake of this article we will refer to them as panoramic pictures or panoramas.

Level the Tripod

Having a tripod is essential when it comes to creating incredible panoramas. It’s vital that the images in the sequence are well lined up; however, you’ll need a well-balanced tripod to achieve that. Note that when you stitch photos together, the light room can fail even the slightest movement between the photographs.

Instead of using the camera body, another tip is to connect your lens to the tripod if your tripod head can turn; this would help up reduce distortion in the photographs. Many panoramic heads usually have measurements inscribed on them (0-360 degrees), so you can accurately move your camera. Note that some panorama heads come with mechanical components used for stitching photos together. If you’re not so skilled in panoramic pictures, you can opt to get one. 

Practice and Master Your Movements

If you want to master taking incredible panoramic pictures, you need to be able to move your camera and tripod conveniently. Operating your gear should be infused into your memory, and the only way to do that is to keep practicing. One of the easiest ways to practice is to set out time to practice in a low-value setting and take practice pictures.

Hence you won’t have to regret missing valuable pictures if the practice image turns out to be bad. For instance, you can set out one hour from your time, set up in your backyard, and take your practice picture. Begin by taking slow, steady steps, and ensure that you perfectly implement your movements. Repeat the activity a few times and increase your speed steadily as you master the camera movements.

Use Longer lenses

Rather than using a wide-angle lens, a better idea is to use lenses with longer lengths when creating panoramic pictures. With a longer focal length, you can view the subject from a different perspective since everything is much closer, but everything is much farther with wide-angle lenses. Since you’re capturing images from a portrait style and stitching several photos together, you can still get the scene from a wider angle while you get the most of the sky and foreground.

Manual Exposure

To get the most out of your panorama, use Manual mode throughout the sequence. The software may not stitch your photos together if the exposures on each frame don’t match. However, the Aperture Priority mode may work for you if it’s a simple scene with few facets.

However, if one side of the image features a high-rise building or a mountain and the other side a sky, the exposures will be different, making it challenging to stitch together. Another method of ensuring the stitching software does its job well is making the frame sharp by using small apertures like f/11 or f/16.

Consider the Portrait orientation.

While creating panoramas, you can usually gain a broader view of the subject from the horizontal angle. However, it’s vital that you also get information from the vertical aspect by using a portrait orientation to create your panorama. Since you’ll be crafting a large image from the multiple smaller ones, it’s vital that you get the most out of your resources to produce the best results.

Hence, rather than placing the camera in landscape orientation, a better option would be to use the portrait orientation to allow you to capture more information from the vertical direction. Besides landscape orientation, you can choose to take extra photos at the end of the sequence if you need more information.

Overshoot and Have Excess Overlap

While shooting the photos that you’ll merge later, it’s vital that you take more pictures than you need and leave some as you overlay the images from one to the other. Although this strategy would make you need more frames to complete the sequences and require more processing skills, you’ll have more margins when stitching the images, which would give you a better result. Additionally, you minimize the chance of cropping your focal point during the stitching process.

Avoid Being Too Slow

General, the elements are very likely to move or change position. The clouds and water can be challenging when you’re merging the images. So since you’re taking multiple shots for each panorama, it’s better to be fast. Once you’ve taken the first shot, you should not waste time changing the camera’s position.

Perform Lens Corrections and Remove Chromatic Aberration before Merging

For an easy stitching process, it’s vital that you do lens correction and chromatic aberration removal before you start merging the images; this is crucial to avoid adverse effects on your panorama. Note that eleven the slightest distortion from your lens can affect the panorama; hence it’s better for you to prevent this problem and save yourself the stress.

Use your GND Filters

As you create your panorama, it’s vital to use your GND filter (Link) to the essence of the content.  Also, you can opt for a neutral density filter if you choose. For instance, if your image features a horizon line(like outs in rages), you can apply the filter in the right place as you take the photos. This tip would produce a great result; however, ensure you don’t move your camera.

Differentiate the Sequences in Lightroom

Now that you’ve taken multiple shots for panoramas, it’s not unusual to be confused, especially if you’ve shot HDRs and panoramas jointly. With the plethora of similar images, it can be challenging for you to identify the start and end points.

Thus, the best way to avoid this confusion is to create a system that helps you identify the beginning and end of a sequence. You could take shots of your hands to mark the beginning of a sequence to make it easy to locate inside Lightroom. Some people would even use paper in front of the lens. Whatever system that works for you is fine as long as it saves you from being confused later.

Create the Perfect 360 Photos

There you have it! Above are some amazing tips to create better panoramas. Creating awesome panoramas involve optimizing the landscapes and taking wonderful pictures for your panoramic tours. With the tips above, you can create fantastic panoramas that are well-detailed and captivating. What do you think about creating better panoramic tours? Share your tours on threesixty.tours for free & share your experiences in the comments below.