Is it better to capture a wide angle shot, or create a panoramic shot using a telephoto lens?
Each approach has its' uses. But, when I want to draw the eye to specific details in the distance, then I almost want to go the panoramic shot using a telephoto lens.
The shot below captures how I remember the view of the new bridge under construction. No one new about the colored lights before this moment, the same day that one of the spans first opened for traffic.
The first shot is from a distance of at least two miles from the center span. I used a 100-400mm lens, instead of wide angle lens.
Notice the resolution of just the center portion of the pano shot.
The shot below is from a different vantage point that brings me to about one mile away from the center span. This vantage point is about a half mile away from the previous shots of the center span. I used a 35mm lens, and this is heavily cropped.
The shot below is of some islands that are about a mile away, captured at 16mm. Compare the size of the footings of the bridge pylons compared to the small island in the photo below. They are about the same size. Shot at 16mm.
My point is a pretty simple one. Using a wide angle lens is not an absolute MUST when it comes to landscape photography. The bridge photos give you a sense of scale. More times than not, a telephoto lens can tell the story of your landscape shot much better than a wide angle lens.
My final comment is that notice how the raw image stack for the pano shot seems to be stair stepped. This is a result of the camera not being perfectly level. I use the built-in camera level to double check how level the camera is.
The built-in level in the camera seems pretty good, in camera. This is true as long as I am shooting in landscape mode. I rolled the camera to portrait mode. I had to eyeball the level point on the tripod ring.
In portrait mode, the on-board compass is not very good in portrait mode. But, no thought seems to have been given to using the level in portrait mode.
@kvbarkley wrote:It depends on movement too. In Wadizzles shot, if any of the boats had been moving, a panorama might require a lot of extra work.
I shot a panorama of Victoria Harbour, made of 5 shots with a Canon EOS60D and a EF-S 15-85mm lens at 35mm (to give me an equivalent FoV of a 50mm).
Now, accepting the fact that I just reduced this image from 48MB to about 4.9MB, it's not going to hold that much quality of detail but I am posting it to show that there is a moving yacht on the right-hand side of the image. I avoided getting an overlap on the boat by shooting it from the direction in which it was travelling, thus by the time I had moved my camera to the left the boat had moved further away, not into the image and causing ghosting.
By the way, the shape of the walkway on the left is accurate, it does go down, then horizontal and then down again.
I have used panos for years. I use them for stuff that you may not think it would work. One thing I always tell folks that are new to panos is to turn the camera vertical.
@ebiggs1 wrote:I have used panos for years. I use them for stuff that you may not think it would work. One thing I always tell folks that are new to panos is to turn the camera vertical.
Nice work! Always overlaping the shots by 1/3 seems to work best. Give the software a nice big bite to chew on.
