Mechanics of Shooting
Fire when ready
attach the camera in a vertical (portrait) position to the panoramic head and
securely tighten the bolt (Picture 3). Use the levels provided on the tripod
to set up the camera exactly level. Then place the hot spirit level on a flat
surface of the camera (Picture 4).
- all the shooting is done in the manual mode. If you face radically differing
lighting, you might try shooting with manual White Balance.
- shooting in XGA resolution and the Fine quality is more than
sufficient, any higher quality of resolution are not necessary unless the
panorama is intended for print
- taking 8 shoots plus 1 up and 1 down shot seems like the optimal set
- try to avoid scenes with wide variations of contrast
- in most cases use the same exposure time and aperture setting for all the
pictures in a set
- in the Fisheye 2 mode, the camera doesn’t let you to focus manually
so you either have to use the infinity setting (that’s perfect for
outdoors panoramas with no objects in the foreground) or the automatic
focus (which gives you pretty good results in small tight spaces)
- for more complicated scenes such as those with wide variations of contrast
or moving people, it’s recommended to take multiple sets of pictures; by taking
2 or 3 sets of 8 pictures from the same point, it’s easier to assemble a better
panorama
- if possible, ask the people to pose for you
- when shooting the up shot, rotate the camera into horizontal position
and take one picture in Fisheye 2 mode
- repeat the same procedure for the down shot but do it without the
tripod, by just holding the camera
- It may be worthwhile to repeat the up and down shots using
the normal lens (take the fisheye converter off and switch to Normal
mode in the Lens submenu)
- A good idea is to shoot a “draft” panorama in a specific spot, then review
the pictures on the computer, checking for mistakes and possible improvements
and then retake them again
|
Picture 2
|
Picture 3
|
Picture 4
|