Panorama photography for beginners by ashPresentom

Panorama photography basics for beginners
Shooting for a panorama scene without a tripod using a point and shoot digital camera.
Skill level; beginner

Most of the time people tend to think merging process of pictures for a panorama scene is the difficult part. But nowadays you can find numerous softwares with the reputation for automatically generating panorama scenes using source images with more efficiency. But the tougher part of panorama photography is taking the individual pictures.

There are 3 types of panorama scenes you can generate, which are horizontal, vertical and tile, and there is also the 360 view which is a complete circle of horizontal panorama scene. And there is also the complete sphere.

Panorama scene production can be made easier with the use of a tripod device, although if you are one of the few that can not reach out to a tripod there is always other alternatives. In trying to shoot pictures for a panorama scene without a tripod, you will need to keep in mind that those individual pictures will not properly line up although this will not trouble the panorama scene, it will only reduce the height of a horizontal scene and the width of a vertical scene. Needless to say it will still be a great panorama scene.

Approach for the actual photo-shooting
To further explain the photo shooting process; let’s assume we are hoping to generate a horizontal panorama scene using an average point and shoot digital camera, without a tripod of course. Also to keep in mind, that a great understanding of visual location of your photo or the portion of the overall panorama scene displayed in the camera and its position as oppose to the overall panorama scene is very important. You need to start from one side of the horizontal panorama scene and work your way slowly across to the other side. Everytime you move to the next shot, make sure the current shot overlap with some parts of the scene with the previously taken picture. Most cameras will have a feature that will let you see a smaller thumbnail of the previously taken picture. For better panorama outcome it is always a good thing to make sure each individual shot overlaps a great amount with other shots. Another thing to keep in mind is hold your camera still as much as you can and everytime you rotate your camera, rotate your wrist as oppose to turning your body. Rotation of wrist works just as the rotation of a tripod with lesser stability.

A tougher version of the panorama scene creation is the tile view. If you are going out there to shoot for a tile panorama scene without a tripod it will be harder than vertical or horizontal panorama shooting. You will have to continue shooting in tiles like direction while having a good understanding of the location of the current section of the scene you see in the lcd screen as oppose to the overall tiled panorama scene.

Once all done the easy part; processing the pictures is the next step. As mentioned in the beginning there are numerous software developed to perform this type of photo functions. There is arcsoft panorama maker, and several others you can discover yourself with a single google search. Also adobe photoshop comes with a photomerge feature which is a very handy tool as well.

For those who are out there thinking of trying a new adventure with panorama pictures to try to capture a larger area of scenery for the first time, I hope this article provided you with some insight and basic knowledge.