Diving Deeper Into Panoramas (Patreon)

One of the 15 nightscape categories covered by my new eBook is the making of astro-landscape panoramas. Besides my own tutorials, I employ the help of seven Guest Artist experts. In this post, I will attempt to add some additional information and further explain some factors that may not be as obvious to the reader as I had originally thought when I wrote the book. Most of my supporting Patreons already have my new eBook as part of their benefits. If you do not have this new, version 2.0, please email me (royce.bair@gmail.com).

The best reason to make panoramas: In a recent poll I conducted on Instagram, it is still obvious that most people think of making panoramas only as a way of widening one's Field of View (FOV). The best reason for making panoramas is to increase the quality of your images, not to increase FOV. However, there is nothing wrong with doing both.

Increasing image quality: The above "Starfield" image by Paul Wilson, featured in the eBook, is a perfect example of using panoramas to increase quality. That image has a standard 3:2 aspect ratio, yet it is a whopping 315 megapixels, made up of sixty images taken with a medium telephoto lens (85mm). Although this sounds extremely tedious to do, it is accomplished easier than you might think, with the aid of a robotic platform that holds the camera and moves it to pre-programmed, multi-row positions.

Making simple panos: Making the more common, single row panoramas is discussed in the beginning section on panoramas. In the above example, I've covered the same FOV of a 24mm lens with four overlapping (by 50%) vertical or "portrait" exposures with a 50mm lens. When stitched together and trimmed, the resulting panorama covers the same FOV as the 24mm (and the same 3:2 aspect ratio), but now has twice as many pixel — resulting in a sharper image, and with less noise due to its higher resolution. The quality of the image is also increased because the overlaps and the stitching software are using the center portions of each exposure, where the lens has less aberrations, like coma. The above technique can also be applied using 4 to 6 vertical exposures with a 24mm lens to cover the same FOV as a 14mm or 15mm lens.

Comparing pano quality. In the above example, I compare a single exposure on the left with a stitched pano on the right. The original seven vertical exposures were actually cropped or trimmed down to the area covered by five stitched exposure. Although you can actually get by with 4 or 5 exposures, it's often best to take 6 or 7 and trim down to your best composition. The example below shows the quality improvement that simple pano stitching can make. That "single" exposure on the left was actually a stack of 8 exposures to reduce noise. The stitched pano on the right has nearly the same noise (without the benefits of stacking), and its sharpness is much better due to its higher resolution and the benefits of using the center portions of the stitched images during the pano stitching process.

Vertoramas: Of course, panoramas are not limited to just horizontal images. The above to two images by Yuri Beletsky are vertical panoramas, or "vertoramas" made by stitching several horizontal ('landscape" orientation) exposures.

Gear for making panoramas. Many photographers think that you need complicated gear for making panoramas, such products made by Nodal Ninja that help you avoid parallax problems. Although I recommend their rotator bases for helping you shoot overlapping exposures with greater ease, you will rarely experience parallax problems in your stitching, except in cases where you have very close objects in the foreground.

Sturdy tripod with a leveling base. What I do recommend is good tripod with a leveling base that will quickly and easily allow you to level your camera with the landscape horizon. This is basic and essential for acheiving good panoramas. My friend, the late Alyn Wallace, and I both recommend the Benro Tortoise Columnless #3 Carbon Fiber Tripod. The reason Alyn and I like this tripod is because it is sturdy, well made (should last you a lifetime), lightweight, and has a built-in leveling base—all for less than $300! A similar Really Right Stuff tripod is going to cost you about $1,200; and, their average add-on leveling base is going to run you another $350, for a total of about $1,550.

Alyn's favorite head for panos: The above picture of Alyn and the Benro Tortoise tripod shows it with his favorite head, the Acratech Panoramic Head, with an Arca-Type Quick Release (Classic Knob) for about $480. This is a two-way head. Although not as versatile as a ball head, the Acratech gives you super accurate reference points for making both horizontal and vertical panoramas. Once you determine how many degrees are needed for moving to your next pano shot (with your 50% overlap), you can move to the next reference mark.

My Favorite Head: I prefer the Benro GD3WH 3-Way Geared Head over the Acratech for all my astro-landscape photography. The 3-way geared head covers all the axises and has degree reference marks (albeit not as bold as the Acratech)—and for only $225 (it's currently on sale for only $175). I also prefer it over a ball head for my regular night photography because you can make composition corrections in the dark with slight turns of the axis knob, whereas with a ball head, once you loosen the head to make adjustments, you have no reference. What takes 5 or 6 composition adjustments with a ball head, rarely takes me more than 1 or 2 with a geared head. Shooting panos, I've also discovered that I can preplan in the daytime and determine how many half-turns of the knob (depending on each lens focal length) I need to move my field of view to the next pano position (with the needed 50% overlap). This is a lot easier than turning on my headlamp and checking my reference marks on the head.

Robotic Panoramas: As I mentioned before, the "Starfield" pano at the top of this post was made using a robotic platform. My coverage of robotic panos starts on page 101 of my eBook, with the help of Guest Artist, Paul Wilson. Paul is a pioneer in robotic panoramas for astro-landscape photography. He started with the Gigapan in 2015, and later switched to the iPANO because it was quieter, more precise, sturdier and had better battery life. His images are highly sought after, especially for fine art because of their extremely high resolution and detail, with some image files being over 500 MP!

A recent survey I did on Instagram revealed that less than 7% of my followers had ever used a Gigapan or iPANO robotic platform in their photography; however, 17% had used the Benro Polaris Astro, which is a 3-axis smart tripod head rather than a robotic platform like the Gigapan and iPANO. The advantage of the Benro Polaris Astro is that it can also track the stars as well as do electronically programmed panorama stitching. The disadvantage of the Polaris is that at the moment, most users have reported stitching errors when it tries to do complicated multi-row pano stitches. Until better firmware updates become available, most users are sticking with single row panos. Still, the quality advantage of having pano exposures that are also tracked, is huge.

Panorama Stitching Software: In another poll I recently took on Instagram on my followers...

• 63% are using Lightroom or Photoshop to stitch their panos.

• 27% are using PTGui.

• 10% are using some other software.

The most common "other" software mentioned was Microsoft ICE for Windows (also known as Microsoft Image Composite Editor). Also mentioned were Autopano Giga, APP and Panorama Studio.

How well does Lr/Ps perform for pano stitching? Both Lightroom and Photoshop use the same "Photomerge" feature. For me and many of the other photographers I've interviewed, it does fairly well for most of their simple, single row panorama stitches.

Here's a Lr/Ps Photomerge example. I took this pano in Zion National Park. This is a RAW file merge or stitch, using the "Cylindrical" function. I've used 6 single exposures with a Canon 6D astro-modified and 24mm lens in the vertical or "portrait" position (6 X f/2.8, 15 sec, ISO 6400). That's Bridge Mountain on the left and "The Watchman" on the right. Both are being lit by light pollution from the sleepy little town (600 population) of Springdale on the far right. The stitching is pretty clean, even though the projection is a little weird. Photomerge has 4 projection options: Auto, Spherical, Cylindrical, and Perspective. I usual try all 4 and see which one looks the least weird! About 40% of the time none of the projection options will work and make a decent looking image, or the merge will simply fail.

Here, I've done post processing on the image and cropped the initial Photomerge to a standard 3:2 aspect ratio — and the image is still 11,900 X 7,933 pixels (almost twice the size of a single horizontal exposure). The field of view is similar to what you'd get with a 14mm or 15mm lens. To create the best crop I often include some of the white corners and fill them in using "Content Aware." Additionally, I will usually take out some of the weird distortion near the edges using Photoshop's Edit > Transform > Warp.

Cropping out the light pollution source, we still have an image that is 9,925 x 6,616 pixels — twice the number of pixels as a single exposure.

Another Lr / Ps Photomerge example: Here's a photo I took last month in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument of Sunset Arch. The photo on top left is a fully post-processed single exposure. The other three are some of the "weird" projection results that Lr/Ps' Photomerge can come up with — if not at all (total failure). Note: these 3 projections are from the raw images, before post-processing.

A recommondation by Yuri Beletsky: That is just one of the reasons panorama expert, Yuri Beletsky recommends (on page 103 of my eBook) that nightscapers use the software PTGui. While Lr/Ps' Photomerge only has 3 projection solutions for stitching (and often fails), PTGui provides 16 projection options, and offers "control points" for stitching complicated images. The slide shown here is from Yuri's 25-minute video tutorial, "Mastering Panorama Images of the Milky Way," which is linked from that same eBook page.

LOTS of OPTIONS: While Lr/Ps' Photomerge requires you to process each of their 3 projection options separately (wasting a lot of time) to find out which one works best for you, PTGui processes your image and presents you with 16 projection options.

In Sadeq Hayati's "Palm Land Under Stars" (Iran), he stitched 200 panels in PTGui to create the circular pano on the right. He then decided to use one of PTGui's 15 other projection options to create the award-winning horizontal pano on the left!

PTGui is a $195 investment. Alex Coleman, writing for Photography Life says, "PTGui is not a purchase to be made lightly. If you aren’t constantly taking panorama photos, or if you only need to stitch simple panoramas, you can probably stick with Lightroom or Photoshop, at least at first. However, for dedicated panorama photographers, there’s no contest " He concludes, "For simple stitches, anything like Lightroom, Photoshop, Luminar, Capture One, etc., should be plenty. But for more complex work, the only software that’s a clear step up is PTGui."