Guide to the Bates Website | Shooting panoramas - old 2002

Preparation before the shoot

The equipment used for the campus panoramic photography includes the Nikon Coolpix 4500 digital camera, Nikon FC-E8 Fisheye Converter and a Bogen tripod with a Bogen panoramic head.

Note that the Coolpix 4500 has a PANORAMA-ASSIST shooting mode (manual page 50). The main advantages of PANORAMA ASSIST mode are:

  1. Camera superimposes part of the previous image over the current image in viewfinder (not very helpful if you're using tripod with panoramic head, but useful if you're considering the Philopod technique.)
  2. Camera maintains white balance and exposure of first photograph to all photos in sequence
  3. Camera stores all panoramas from the shoot in a single folder.

The disadvantage of PANORAMA-ASSIST is that it does not support the F2 - Fisheye 2 lens setting. Therefore I do not recommend using it.

Before taking the first panorama shoot, it is necessary to properly setup the camera as well as the tripod/pano-head duo.

Camera Setup
  • attach the Fisheye converter to the camera making sure that the camera lens is clean and free of any dust particles
  • turn the camera on and press MENU button
  • Scroll down to User Setting and select User Setting 3 (that's our User Setting for panoramas)
  • go to the Lens submenu and select F2 - Fisheye 2 (if it is not already)
  • Exit the MENU (press MENU button a few more times)
  • Press and hold MODE and turn the chrome wheel until you're in MANUAL (M) mode

    • Panohead Setup

    Set the Nodal Point

    One of the critical points of shooting panoramic pictures is to properly setup and adjust the panoramic head as to minimize or eliminate the parallax. The key principle is to make the camera rotate around the lens’ nodal point. Finding the nodal point is not so important for panoramas with less than 180-degree vertical coverage, but it is ESSENTIAL for our project. This is achieved by setting the rail on the panoramic head.

    Ideal rail settings for the Coolpix 4500 have been determined to be:

    Choosing a location

  • picking the proper time of the day is one of the most important things as the position of the sun throughout the day affects the results to a large degree (the sunrise if approximately above the Merrill Gym and the sunset is above the Frye Street)
  • shooting in the evening gives you nice atmospheric effects of the sunset but you also get very long shadows of yourself and the tripod (these can be photoshopped out)
  • fisheye lens gives nice results in tighter spaces while large open areas don’t appear attractive on the resulting panorama
  • it’s almost impossible to find a place (there are a few though) that has points of interest all around, therefore it’s better to pick a spot close to a interestingly looking object and use the rest of the 360 space as a “background”
  • as with normal photos, panoramas with one main object/idea look much better than a pile of different incoherent objects
  • very interesting points are intersections of sidewalks (front of Hathorne, Chase Hall or Pettengill) and places with terrain elevation (steep sidewalk between Pettengill and Lane Hall)
  • people make the pictures much more interesting! Always have one or more persons in your Foreground!
    •