Panoramic long exposure

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.

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...

That was my initial thought!

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.

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

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

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