My first ever panorama

Hello,

Decided to take a stab at a pano while vacationing in Lake George, NY.
I used 17 images and stitched them with CS4 Photomerge.

What do you think?

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/mszuminski/6024​014159/

You did very well.

David

thank you, David.

I wasnt sure about the different colors of the sky and shadows making it look underexposed in certain spots.

Try something smaller for your first panorama, this is quite wide and in such a pano it isnot easy controling the exposure. Not to mention throughout the pano you can clearly see most of the separate shots which is a big no-no.

You've got the idea right, but there are other ways to stitch a pano and some reading is in order.

Lake George, NY? In the Adirondacks? Beautiful country.

You certainly took on a major job with 17 images. Unfortunately it has resulted in a rather uneven water line.

Shoot everything in Manuel, Shoot verticle, Shoot left to right (the body moves easier that way)
Shoot with a 50% overlap - then you do not get the verticle banding you see here, Shoot FAST so stuf like clouds dont move to much (with a 50% overlap you shouldent notice it )
shoot Twice - then let Photoshop do its thing

This is 41 shots total - could of done it with 15-16 but more = better fit - this was shot hand held and to take all 41 photos i spent less then 2 minutes

LONDON808 wrote in post #12902119
Shoot everything in Manuel, Shoot verticle, Shoot left to right (the body moves easier that way)

When I started shooting pano's vertical, I noticed a huge improvement.

Thank you all.

I did shoot vertical, left to right and pretty fast (on a tripod with panhead). I didn't shoot in M and didn't overlap as much .
It all makes sense though. I should have exposed it manually, lock it in and snap. Kind of strange that I can only see the stitching spots when I uploaded it here. May be time for glasses.
I wish I had better phone signal up there and was able to access the web from my phone. I would have researched it better right on the spot. Now I have to wait a year to try again.

smyke wrote in post #12902570
Thank you all.

I did shoot vertical, left to right and pretty fast (on a tripod with panhead). I didn't shoot in M and didn't overlap as much .
It all makes sense though. I should have exposed it manually, lock it in and snap. Kind of strange that I can only see the stitching spots when I uploaded it here. May be time for glasses.
I wish I had better phone signal up there and was able to access the web from my phone. I would have researched it better right on the spot. Now I have to wait a year to try again.

Add in manual white balance so you don't get color shifts

Water proves the unraveling in this shot. It's impossible to get the waves to be synchronized in subsequent shots. So you see artifacts where the waves are out of phase at the boundaries. It's the same problem for HDR and 3D shots taken successively.

The lines are caused by the whit balance changing and the f stop and shutter speed changing slightly,

All M - set focus and then go Manuel focus,

i agree with the whole M thing

how would I set white balance in that situation to keep it consistent?

smyke wrote in post #12905287
how would I set white balance in that situation to keep it consistent?

Pick a preset and leave it for the entire sequence.

for mine i usually set it to cloudy for all and then adjust it with PS once its stitched together