With Apple and Android phones, the ability to take panorama photographs has really changed the landscape (if you’ll pardon the pun 🙂 ) for still photography in this genre. You can get some truly stunning results without the need to stitch several photographs together in heavy desktop applications like Photoshop anymore. Like anything else though, there are things you can do to increase your keeper rate, and things to avoid (unless you like deleting tons of photos). Here are Five Tips To Improve Panorama Photos:
Tip #1 – Make sure you scope out the scene all around you. Believe it or not, the iPhone panorama photo feature goes to nearly 300 degrees from left to right. This means you will almost be doing a complete circle. Is there anything on your left or right that you particularly want to be in the photo, or the draw of your photo? Make sure that you initially face that particular person or scene. Then turn 90 degrees to your left before you start shooting.
(I wanted to make sure the plane on camera right was fully in the frame, and my first short, the pano ended right before the hallway on the right, so it looked like it was cut off…)
Tip #2 – Go slow! The iPhone will tell you to slow down if you start moving too quickly from left to right, but at that point, it’s likely too late. Stop the shot and start over. Don’t get impatient because your wife (or husband, or significant other or friend or whoever) wants to get to your ultimate destination. The amount of time it takes to completely capture the pano scene is about 15 seconds from left to right. Add another 15 seconds to review the image on screen before you leave the area (you may have to re-shoot). Finally, add another 15 seconds to your itinerary in case you really do need to re-shoot! Just as a buffer, I’d add a final 15 seconds in because…well, you never know! All in, that’s one minute of their lives that your S.O. will have to wait for you.
Tip #3 – Consider the lighting – If your scene varies a lot from dark areas to light areas, that will not bode well for capturing a pano with the iPhone. Why? Quite simply, it can’t capture the dynamic range of our eyes. Low light to bright light can be tough for the sensor to handle, and extremely low light scenes will introduce a lot of grain too. Most of the time, shots that result from these scenarios will be unusable. Exceptions to this would be city skyline shots. The bright lights will be blown out, and the skyline itself will be all in shadow, but that’s ok – that kind of contrast is actually a good thing for skyline shots!
(Clearly, the bright light of the lamp and the darker area of the living room made for a bad contrast between bright and dark areas here…this is a bad shot imho..pano or no pano! )
Tip #4 – Consider the framing from top to bottom. When shooting pano shots from the iPhone, you can’t rotate the camera to go into landscape mode – it must be recorded in portrait mode. This means you may get portions of your scene at the bottom, the top, or both that you might not otherwise want in a final photo. Re-frame accordingly as you conceptualize the shot!
Similarly, consider what’s off-camera to the immediate left and right. Is it the road you’re on or a coastline? Unless you take up several frames when viewing this kind of shot, it may end up looking a bit odd.
Finally, consider that you do not necessarily have to go the full range from left to right or right to left. Some the best types of scenes for panoramic photography are better off from perhaps just a little bit more than a standard picture. Here for example, an architectural shot, or perhaps a larger group of people. Everyone automatically presumes that panos are best utilized in landscape photography. While this is true, there are usages outside of that genre.
