Panoramic Photography

"Panoramic photography is a technique of photography, using specialized equipment or software, that captures images with horizontally elongated fields of view. It is sometimes known as wide format photography. The term has also been applied to a photograph that is cropped to a relatively wide aspect ratio, like the familiar letterbox format in wide-screen video." This is how Wikipedia describes this type of photography. I always liked to look at wide angle photos, and tried different techniques so far.

The first important thing is your equipment. If you have a camera with a "panorama" shooting option, than fine. If not, like me in the time we were touring with our motorcycles, June 2011 with my friend Ugur. (You can find my posts about the trip on the menu on June 2011.) Than you have to take vertical shots and merge them in a software at your computer or mobile device. I will not talk about the software's and how to merge them. The more important thing is how you take them.

It doesn't matter if you have a panorama shoot mode or not, the most important thing is to stay steady and only turn yourself from your hips. I mean it!! I see so many people taking panoramas with stepping up to right or left. The result will not be accurate and you will most probably have distortion. 

Let's say you will start from left side. 

1. Place your feet hard to the ground

2. Open them as wide as your shoulder

3. Check how you will move your camera from left to right (vertical shot)

4. Check what you see during this sample move, from the display of your camera

5. Keep steady and start shooting/recording from left

6. Only move your hips and don't rush

7. When you are satisfied with your angle, stop recording

8. Check your photo, if you see something you don't like, keep it in mind and start taking another one.

9. Go to step 1 

If you are shooting, keep also in mind to overlap the photos. This means, in your second photo there should be at least 10% of the first shot in it. Otherwise it will be very hard to merge them. I made this mistake many times and have panoramas that even software's can not merge totally. :(

Here are some panorama shootings with a camera that didn't had a panorama shooting mode in it. So I took a lot vertical shots with my technique described above, and merged them in my computer after I got back from the tour. I didn't make any correction on it, so that I can show you just the raw result of merge. As you can see, there is less distortion and the flow keeps good for the viewer.

The first 2 are from Cappadocia, next 2 from Uchisar Castle and the last one Ihlara Valley.