Great Opportunity - Need Panoramic Advice

[intechpcx]

Hey everyone, I'm not sure if this is the right place for this or not, but I figure I'll start here. My in-laws are decorating their new house and in their Den in the basement they wanted a panoramic view of a football (american football) stadium on two of the walls. The goal being to make it almost like you're on the field surrounded by the stands.

So I've worked it out with the Green Bay Packers that I'll be able to get on the field to take panoramics of the inside of Lambeau field this summer. A really cool opportunity but I need to make the most of it (since I'll only get one shot at this). My plan is to stand a fixed length from the base of the stands and slowly work my way around the endzone and one side of the field. I'm probably going to shoot at multiple focal lengths since I'm thinking to cover up an 8 foot by 10 foot wall I'm going to need multiple shots both vertically and horizontally. I think I'm covered as far as memory cards and such.

So I'm looking for any advice people can offer here. Has anyone ever taken on a project like this before? Can you give me some thoughts even in more general terms as to how best I should handle this. Any thoughts and advice you can provide would be most appreciated.

[tim]

Heh heh, i'm wearing a packers tshirt right now, a gift from an American guy who stayed at my flat a while ago.

Sounds like a big project. I have a few tips that i've worked out, not sure how applicable they are to this project.
- Do some meter readings of the darkest and brightest areas, then put the camera on manual mode and take the photos like that. If you don't you'll get stripes in the photowhere the exposures are different. See here (http://mrwild.co.nz/unprotected/potn/CloudPanarama2.jpg) for an example.
- Take the photos in portrait orientation, not landscape. You lose quite a lot of height with the stiching process.
- Make sure you have the rights to sell the image, it sounds like it could be saleable if it turns out well :)

[steven]

I would recomend you shoot at one focal length. Different focal lengths cause you problems when you are stiching the pictures together.

Also rather than picking a set distance from the stands I would go with center of the field and then do a 360 panorama. How many rows will depend on the focal length you choose. The larger the focal length the more rows.

Another vote for manual mode. The way tim describes it is the best way to work it and will give you even results when you stich the pictures together.

Way before you go do the stadium go out and try smaller panoramas. This will give you practice with taking them as well as piecing them together.

Do you have pano head? This will make stiching easier.

[intechpcx]

Thank you both for the replies. Steve, what I was talking about with the different focal lengths was to cover the same areas but at two different focal lengths. So I'd do one stripe at say 35mm and do it that same area again with stripes at 55mm for instance. The point in my mind was that this would give me leyway that if the shots at 35mm weren't high resolution enough to blow up as big as I need I could instead use more numerous shots done at 55mm.

Any, I think I'll definitely be shooting in Manual and I'm sure RAW as well. I do plan to do some practicing first. I look at this as almost like shooting a wedding or something because I've got one shot to get it right and that's it.

Steve, I'm still looking into panoramic mounts, don't own one yet but I will before I attempt this.

Thanks again guys.

[chucksberg]

try a local high school stadium first just to warm up and make the mistakes before your "live"

[steven]

I understand you now with the different focal lengths and that sound like a good idea.

Shooting in RAW is (in my opinion) always good. Just make sure that you apply the same setting to the RAW image to all you pictures.

For you DRebel consider Panosaurus Panoramic Tripod Head (http://gregwired.com/pano/Pano.htm $85.95). For the price it is one of the cheepest I've seen and while I don't own one I have read many recomendations for it. The reason I don't own one is the weight of my camera (1Ds) is too much.