Patagonia panorama with Thomas Heaton: The gear and settings you need for a good pano

 

 

Just outside of El Chalten in Patagonia, photographer Thomas Heaton wanted to capture a panorama of a beautiful mountain range. In the video below, we go behind the scenes with Heaton as he sets up his shot and captures the necessary images for a stitched panorama.

The first step is ensuring that your tripod is level. Whether this means adjusting each leg independently until the tripod is level or simply leveling the head on your tripod depends upon your own gear, but the critical part is that your camera will be level as you go from shot to shot along the scene. This will ensure that you are able to keep as much of the stitched panorama as possible, because if you have to level your image during processing, that means you'll be cutting parts of the frame. You want to turn your camera to a vertical orientation when shooting a panorama to ensure that you will have the most megapixels to work with later.

With the tripod and camera physically set up, the next thing to do is check your settings. You want manual focus, manual exposure and a set white balance (not automatic) when photographing a panorama. You don't want any focus or exposure variations from frame-to-frame.

To see more of Thomas Heaton's work, visit his website and follow him on Instagram.

(Via Thomas Heaton)