Panoramic long exposure

[sancho1983]

The fair will be coming to my town soon and part of it takes place along the side of a river next to a meadow, i think it will look pretty good if i could get a panorama shot of the length of the rides, have only tried panorama shots once before and it came out ok, but not sure how to approach this one, i would like to have a long enough exposure to blur the lights of the rides, will this be possible with panoramas?

Any suggesgions for a good setup?

ISO 100 (got that bit sorted!!)

oh yeah and i have a tripod and shutter release cable obv.

[FlyingPhotog]

I think to have any chance at getting cohesive motion blur of all the rides at once, your best bet is to shoot it wide and crop it to a pano. I know you won't get the same resolution as a true stitched shot but I think trying to get all the moving lights to line up perfectly will be a PIA...

[sancho1983]

That was my initial thought!

[chauncey]

You could cheat by doing the panorama at the speed you desire, then, without moving the tripod,
concentrate on each ride without a concern for anything else. Blend whatever is necessary in PS.

Doable, but a real PITA.

[jrader]

Well, I know this may sound off subject, but it is intimate to your question.

I wanted to do a panoramic of a river and waterfall, but I wanted the silky effect. So I did each shot with a long enough exposure to give me the effect I wanted, making sure to keep the focus constant (i.e. manual focus) and the f# the same as to not change the depth of field. After stitching the images in PS, it came out great!

The whole point is that I definitely think this is doable, under the same kind of conditions. One thing I think you are going to have to deal with, though, is the lights being overexposed. I would do some test shots at a high ISO to get an idea of exposure length to achieve the effect you want, then dial the ISO down and the exposure length up appropriately.

Hope this helps.

John

[Mack_S]

If there's a large enough gap between the rides you could just put the seem there to stitch your pano together. I think it should be fairly easy to match the lights of a non-moving tent/arcade and have the moving rides in the middle of the frame. It may take a few extra shots but who cares, it's digital, what have you got to loose. Hope this helps.

-Mack

[sancho1983]

Thanks guys, definitely going to give it a go.

I'm hoping the rides are laid out sensibly (for me!) so i can get one ride in each shot with enough left over to be able to stitch