The first thing that comes to mind when it comes to panoramas is the extremely wide field of view. Usually, you need multiple photos to capture such angles. A big picture can also be achieved with a single crop. Which method should you use for the landscape? Cropping or stitching?
My first panorama was done in Austria at the foot of its highest mountain. The panorama consists of six or seven images in the horizontal orientation. After the prints were returned from the print shop, I tried to glue them together with some tape. It’s too bad. The recorded scene has a curve and the lines don’t match at all.
Or of course, this is not possible without warping and bending the image to compensate for the angle of view of the lens. But that’s next to the point. It perfectly shows why a big picture is often done in the first place. It is desirable to have a wider field of view than any lens can provide.
Panoramas and Digital Photography
With digital photography, it becomes quite easy to put photos together. 180-degree panoramas are no longer an exception. It is even possible to take 360-degree panoramas, from single-row panoramas to multi-row panoramas with many hundreds of megapixels. The software will correct any errors in the lens perspective. It will stretch and compress the contours until it is impossible to see where one picture ends and the other begins.
The note slides provide parallax correction. They shift the rotation on the node. The simplest slide buttons are for horizontal pans; More sophisticated sliders allow horizontal and vertical rotation. Taking a panoramic photo is almost as easy as taking a normal photo, whatever field of view you desire, as long as you have the right equipment.
Reasons for merging multiple photos into one panorama
There’s a reason I try to take panoramas with simple color film. I wanted a field of view that exceeded the 28mm lens I had back then. In those days, wider focal lengths were not common, so panoramas were the only way to achieve that. With two photos, it works pretty well, but more than two photos is extremely difficult.
A wider field of view is exactly the purpose of panoramic photography. It gives the ability to capture more landscapes than you can achieve with the wide-angle lens you own. In this day and age, 28mm lenses are no longer considered particularly wide-angle. We now have the opportunity to use a focal length of 15mm on a full-frame or even wider sensor.
If you still need an even wider field of view, a panorama is the way to go. Stitch enough photos together and you can rotate up to 360 degrees, that’s all the way. In addition, you can also shoot the full 180 degrees in the vertical direction. It’s like photographing every inch of the ball from the inside and flattening it out.
If you want that field of view, you need a multi-shot panorama. Get yourself a nod slide or a full-size panoramic head and go ahead. You don’t have to worry about layouts, paths or anything else. Everything is in the frame. The only layout ability you have is to decide where you want the outline of the image.
A reason to crop into panoramas
Unless there’s a good reason for that, I don’t believe panoramas are the best choice for landscapes. Capturing everything is too easy. Usually, landscape photos benefit from the photographer’s choice. What to incorporate in the frame? What was kept out of the frame? How does a path run through the image and how do you divide the most interesting elements in the frame?
Landscape photography with a super wide angle is one of the hardest things to do. Usually, you get too much in the frame. Taking more panoramas will only capture more. So, why not choose to capture a frame with a focal length that captures your desired horizontal field of view and crop it to a panorama aspect ratio?
When using wide angle, the angle is not only in the horizontal plane. It is also in the vertical plane, which is not always desirable. So why not trim the excess in post-processing? Remove a little bit from the top and a little bit from the bottom. You will have a beautiful panoramic photo without collage. And you don’t have to worry about parallax or ghosting.
What about so many resolutions?
There is one possible downside to crop: you lose resolution. If the pixel count of the camera sensor is high enough then it shouldn’t be a problem. Most of the time, photos with only 20 megapixels instead of 24 or 30 megapixels don’t matter.
But if you need a lot of megapixels, you can find a solution in a multi-shot panorama or even a multi-row panorama. Don’t feel the need for an extreme field of view. Simply capture the field of view you like and use a longer focal length to increase the resolution level. This way, you can shoot landscapes with a 35mm lens, or a 50mm can also be captured with a 15mm focal length lens. This way you are not using the compound line for extreme field of view but for resolution purposes.
When to cut and when not to cut
When do you need a multi-image panorama and when is cropping enough? This is something only you can answer. After all, I don’t know your needs. But you can use the following guidelines to choose the best way for you:
- If you need a wide field of view, use a multi-shot or multi-row panorama.
- If you want a normal field of view but at high resolution and panoramic aspect ratio, use a multi-shot or multi-row panorama with a longer focal length.
- If you want a normal field of view and panoramic aspect ratio but don’t necessarily increase the resolution, crop the image in post-processing.
bottom line
All three ways of taking panoramic photos have a purpose. Which one is right for you can be decided by your own needs. I find cropping the normal panorama to be the best choice for most of my needs. But that’s a personal matter. There are no rules that tell you what to do.
Let me know in the comments below how you want to create your panoramas and why. I would love to learn more about the reasoning behind that decision.
