Don't Forget About Panoramic!

Intro by Skip Cohen

It may have been written and posted last fall, but this article by my good pal Mark Toal is still right on point. Too often we tend to forget about the power of shooting panoramic. Even more important is making sure you have the right gear! For example, check out the image above, as I share a lesson in what NOT to do.

I was without a camera one evening last year and we were walking on Siesta Beach here in Sarasota. I was looking at an amazing sunset in one direction and a rainbow after a powerful storm in the other. All I had with me was my iPhone and sadly, not a steady enough hand to pay attention to getting a level landscape when I tried to get a "180" of the scene in front of me. It left me determined to simply never be without a decent camera and the right lens!

While I still love the image, the rockiness of the horizon line drives me nuts, even after a professional tried to clean it up for me. So, the lesson is this: have the right gear with you and capture panoramic images that draw in your audience like Mark talks about in today's post!

And, if you're interested in checking out more of Mark's work along with his "partners in crime", Joe and Mary Farace, put Mirrorless Photo Tips on your radar. Lots of great content always shared with the intent to help you raise the bar on your own skill set and awareness!

You'll also find lots of great images and helpful content in Panasonic's Lumix Lounge. Check out Mark's work as well as the work of Panasonic's Luminary team. They're all just a click away.

Visit the Lumix Lounge

---

by Mark Toal

It’s fall and everywhere you look the landscape is amazing. Leaves changing, great clouds and shadows are everywhere. Even with a wide-angle lens like the Lumix G Vario 7-14mm on a  Panasonic Lumix GX8 it’s hard to capture the view of what your eyes see.
​
I was making one of my favorite drives from Reno to Carson City then up to Virginia City and then back down to Reno. Coming down Geiger Grade from Virginia City you get an incredible view of Washoe Valley, Reno and the Sierra Nevada mountain range. At one of the turnouts high above the valley I pulled over and walked a few hundred yards and saw this view.

Looking through the viewfinder the wide-angle lens didn’t capture the scene the way that I saw it. Like a lot of mirrorless cameras, the GX8 allows me to switch to a dedicated panoramic mode that prompts me to move the camera across the scene as it take images and stitches them together. 

Tip: If possible set your camera to shoot while holding the camera vertically, not horizontally. This will give you an image with more height as opposed to a very wide, narrow image.

If your camera doesn’t have a dedicated panoramic setting you can still get the same affect by taking individual photos and overlapping them by approximately 25% as you shoot. There are a lot of software that will stitch them together including Adobe Lightroom.
​
Contrary to what you read you do not need a tripod to shoot panoramic images. The camera or the software will correct for most problems when it stitches the images together.