Wedding Panoramas

[BobL]

I'm more of a landscape photographer so I couldn't resist taking these panos at a couple of recent weddings. I have the full manfrotto pano tripod but I just shot these hand held I left the boring old portraits to the pro ;-)

The church shot is a 180 degree: 6 x 8 Mp shots taken at 1600 ISO taken with my D20.
The over water shot is a 360 degree pano: 12 x 8 Mp shots at 800 ISO also with my D20. I still have to process out the exposure banding - no biggie if I go back to the RAW shots

When I print them out I use 210 mm wide roll paper so they come out pretty long.

[PIXI_666]

i like the last one that is beautiful, but i think id cut it off where the jetty stops on the right?

Del

[clengster_77]

nice :)

[BobL]

Here are a couple more.

The river shore view was shot with a 5 Mp IXUS, 8 shots
The reception shot is a 90 degree 5 x 8 Mp Images with a D20 on 3200 ISO (ie no flash)

[BobL]

i like the last one that is beautiful, but i think id cut it off where the jetty stops on the right?

Del

At the end of the jetty is where their reception (South Perth Boathouse) was held so I will probably just cut out the sign on the right

[PIXI_666]

That's not at Sandalford Estate is it???? My sister was married there and those barrels look like the reception room we were in, it was BEE EE YOOOO TIFUL! Unfortunately i was only 18 and not into wedding photography much so didn't get any gorgeous photo's in there!!! I liek the barrel pano that one is noice!

[staciecd]

I really like the reception shot. What a great place for a reception!

[dentharg]

How do you do it??

[BobL]

That's not at Sandalford Estate is it???? My sister was married there and those barrels look like the reception room we were in, it was BEE EE YOOOO TIFUL! Unfortunately i was only 18 and not into wedding photography much so didn't get any gorgeous photo's in there!!! I liek the barrel pano that one is noice!

Yep that's the place - it's called the "Oak Room" - the aroma of oak and fortified wine was magic! The Sandalford Website has a Quicktime VR of that room if you want to see it in detail. All my panos are also made into high resolution QTVRs but don't usually make these public. The original Oak room pano shot is 29 Mp.

[PIXI_666]

yes thats where we were i loved it its so my scene and the wine barels made for perfect photos i hope one day i get a weddin ghtere, id love to do a swan valley wedding with all the vines and wines lol gorgoeus darling!!

[BobL]

How do you do it??

There are many panorama stitching programs around that can do this and whole websites on how to make panoramas. It is relatively easy to do for distant landscapes but there are many tricks involved in getting it right inside and especially when people are involved. The individual shots are taken with a 20 to 25% overlap on each side.The biggest problem comes when people on the edges of the individual frames move. If you use portrait framing (which all these panos are) then you only have a relatively narrow middle half/third of the shot that is not part of an adjacent shot. Thus you need to divide your shots up into segments that avoids people at the edges. This was impossible to do in the church pano was and I had to go back and cut and paste a couple of peoples heads from one of the original images into the final pano because they moved so much in between the shots. There is also a parallax problem to avoid but that's probably too technical to discuss in these threads.

All my panos are stitched together using Apple QuickTime VR Authoring tool (I don't think this program is available any more - it ony runs on Mac OS9 and I keep a 3 year old Mac Laptop running on OS9 just to do this) because I also make them into QTVRs. When you use a large MP cameras you can zoom in a long way and check out a lot of detail in QTVRs.

All this is fun but takes planning, processing time and effort. The original image sizes are enormous, for example the over water shot is 50 Mp or 150 Mb of raw image and chews up hard drive space real quick. It takes me about one hour to process the individual images for exposure and then stitch the shots together. Printing takes another hour because I usually do a 50 or 100mm wide test print before I do a final print.

When it works you can get a great effect but it's not something that would probably pay and only do it for friends.

[PIXI_666]

There are many panorama stitching programs around that can do this and whole websites on how to make panoramas. It is relatively easy to do for distant landscapes but there are many tricks involved in getting it right inside and especially when people are involved. The individual shots are taken with a 20 to 25% overlap on each side.The biggest problem comes when people on the edges of the individual frames move. If you use portrait framing (which all these panos are) then you only have a relatively narrow middle half/third of the shot that is not part of an adjacent shot. Thus you need to divide your shots up into segments that avoids people at the edges. This was impossible to do in the church pano was and I had to go back and cut and paste a couple of peoples heads from one of the original images into the final pano because they moved so much in between the shots. There is also a parallax problem to avoid but that's probably too technical to discuss in these threads.

All my panos are stitched together using Apple QuickTime VR Authoring tool (I don't think this program is available any more - it ony runs on Mac OS9 and I keep a 3 year old Mac Laptop running on OS9 just to do this) because I also make them into QTVRs. When you use a large MP cameras you can zoom in a long way and check out a lot of detail in QTVRs.

All this is fun but takes planning, processing time and effort. The original image sizes are enormous, for example the over water shot is 50 Mp or 150 Mb of raw image and chews up hard drive space real quick. It takes me about one hour to process the individual images for exposure and then stitch the shots together. Printing takes another hour because I usually do a 50 or 100mm wide test print before I do a final print.

When it works you can get a great effect but it's not something that would probably pay and only do it for friends.

i thought id mention doing pano's works better with a swivel tripod then you can click, move, click, move, click etc without it going off balance so you can stitch it a lot nicer...and then if its not 100% perfect put it in PS and heal the stitched parts you can still see...

Del

[jamiewexler]

The reception Pano is very nice!

[CyberPet]

I have to remember that, to actually make a panorama... would look awesome in print!

[tim]

That's a great idea!

One suggestion though - meter the whole scene, work out what the brightest area is, then shoot all the frames in manual. That way you won't get banding. If you need to use your flash i'd be tempted to stick that in manual too, for consistence, but it'd be best avoided.

[BobL]

i thought id mention doing pano's works better with a swivel tripod then you can click, move, click, move, click etc without it going off balance so you can stitch it a lot nicer...and then if its not 100% perfect put it in PS and heal the stitched parts you can still see...

Del

Del, I do have a full Manfrotto Pano tripod and panoramic head (http://www.manfrotto.com/Jahia/cache/offonce/pid/2357?livid=80|81&lsf=81&child=3) but I hate lugging that or any tripod around particularly in situations like weddings so this is why I do these hand held. Tripods also do not help with people movement.

[BobL]

That's a great idea!

One suggestion though - meter the whole scene, work out what the brightest area is, then shoot all the frames in manual. That way you won't get banding. If you need to use your flash i'd be tempted to stick that in manual too, for consistence, but it'd be best avoided.

I have used this but you can still get some banding especially close to bright lights but this can generally be fixed in PS. Here's a pano shot manual exposure but I still had to exposure bracket the 3 shots closest to the sun to get it reasonably balanced.

[PIXI_666]

thats awesome that you can hand hold your pano's i have so much trouble with hand holding them that in the end my photo ends up too skinny from trying to stitch it together properly hahaha

[CyberPet]

Shoot vertical, then you have more height to pick from - although you need more images, since you have to overlap them 25-30% to be able to stitch well.

[PIXI_666]

Actually speaking of pano's my work mate who im photographing their wedding october for wants some pano's of her and hubby on beach....cottosloe beach in WA is gorgeous with the indiana tea house in the background so im quite excited to get shots there for them and stitch a pano together!!!

[BobL]

Actually speaking of pano's my work mate who im photographing their wedding october for wants some pano's of her and hubby on beach....cottosloe beach in WA is gorgeous with the indiana tea house in the background so im quite excited to get shots there for them and stitch a pano together!!!

Here's a neat tip you can think about - watch out for that perfect light/weather day and then go down go down to the Indiana tea rooms at about the same time of day that you plan to shoot and plan the pano. Think about where you want to position the couple and even take a couple of panos. Then on the big day if the weather/light is not so good or there are people in the way you can susbstitute frames of one pano into the other. Of course you can also shoot stuff after the event.

[PIXI_666]

Bob that is one of the most simple yet genius comments hahahaha GREAT idea! Im gonna do it :)

I am planning to move to perth from the country in a few months tiem so i will finally be able to go places, check them out a few months before these weddings instead of the day before so i can plan EVERYTHING down to a tee...

really great advice thanks so much :) Why didnt i think of that??