Help: Polarization effect on sky in a panorama

To start off - I KNEW I was going to run into issues with the polarization as I panned for the stitched panorama - I just didn't think the effect would be quite as strong.

As a result, my sky in the middle has an oval-ish darkening in the upper middle. Is there a general clean way to try and even out the sky, apart from something like a radial filter and just hoping to line it up "cleanly enough"?

The radial filter is likely your best recourse to fix the issue. I'm not surprised you had issues if you used a polariser while doing a wide pano. I have had uneven looking skies in a 360 pano without using any filter at all.

Alan

Kaitlyn, if you are shooting with a mere 24mm on FF (15mm on APS-C), the lens sees a horizontal area of almost 74 degrees in a single shot...stitch two shots even with a lot of overlap between shots and you are easily recording 120-140 degrees of sky. We know a polarizing filter has a very noticeable difference in effect at 0/180 degrees vs. at 90/270 degrees to the sun!

Wilt wrote in post #18607469
Kaitlyn, if you are shooting with a mere 24mm on FF (15mm on APS-C), the lens sees a horizontal area of almost 74 degrees in a single shot...stitch two shots even with a lot of overlap between shots and you are easily recording 120-140 degrees of sky. We know a polarizing filter has a very noticeable difference in effect at 0/180 degrees vs. at 90/270 degrees to the sun!

Thanks for answering my question. And focal length has minimal usefulness in a panorama - it just matters how wide you pan. Not sure what your post is for. Thanks anyway.

My point was that anytime you capture 90 degrees of the sky (and more), any polarizing filter will accentuate differences in the sky coloration/brightness. So any post processing effort to make the sky uniform is inherently handicapped even more than lens-only without filtration! The best solution is not to use a polarizer.

Wilt wrote in post #18607564
My point was that anytime you capture 90 degrees of the sky (and more), any polarizing filter will accentuate differences in the sky coloration/brightness. So any post processing effort to make the sky uniform is inherently handicapped even more than lens-only without filtration! The best solution is not to use a polarizer.

Yeah, it's just that I literally started off saying I knew it was going to be a problem - so telling me it's a problem when you do it doesn't help me much

Knowing there is a problem is one thing, understanding why there was a problem is another. Wilt is trying to explain why your sky received such a difference in color. Also, don't forget that these posts are also for the benefit of the other members who read them and learn from them, not just the benefit of the OP.

Cheers.