What to bring and how to prepare.
Camera and lens.
Lens
Focal length: Below Normal: ½ of normal or smaller is best.
A normal lens requires more images but is more tolerant to parallax issues. Therefore easier to stitch. A fisheye requires less images and is much harder to calibrate. Stitching can be difficult if not impossible. A good balance is a lens with a focal length of ½ normal but not a full 180° fisheye. I started out using a zoom lens. Since a change in focal length also changes the no nodal point, I used silicone tape to lock the barrel. Silicone tape only sticks to itself.
Most of us use a fisheye lens. Provided the calibration has been fine tuned, the software has no trouble stitching. I have used a fisheye with a 140° field of view and one with a 180° field of view. The 180° required 4 sets and the 140° required 8. The 180° images took much longer to stitch. It got to the point where the 180° was not worth using. The 140° is my go to lens.
Since a camera sensor are 2 dimensional, cutting the normal size in half will not work. Using 50mm as the standard for a full frame camera half of normal works out to be…
- Full frame: 35mm
- 1/2 frame: 25mm
- 4/3 frame: 17mm.
Remote Trigger
While a wired trigger will work, since these panoramas are 360° there is a good chance your shadow will get the way. They also have a tendency to get tangled. A wireless or if your camera has wifi, works best.
Camera Settings
With all the settings on today’s digital cameras, it’s easy to forget where they all are. To make things go smoothly here are the setting you need to know.
Panoramas are shot in manual mode. Both exposure and focus.
Be able to switch from single exposure to exposure compensation. Set the exposure at 1 EV intervals. Beware: some cameras have an HDR setting. However they may only shoot jpegs in this mode.
Set color balance in camera.
Center mark: On
Guide Lines: On
Tilt (level) Sensor: On