I have been playing with my new Canon  30D in order to get the best pictures for panoramicas. I have been running into issues here and there.

1) When shooting on of the 4 pics for a drum panoramica, if one of the shots is to a wall that has nothing on it, then the camera tries to focus one way or another but you can not really take the picture. I press the shutter button and nothing happens. The only thing I can do to make it work is to place my hand infront of the camera, press the shutter half way to focus on it, then once it is set on my hand, I remove my hand and then press the sutter all the way and then I can take the picture.

2) Is Raw the best way for pano shooting?

3) When taking a picture of a window I tried using AE lock. I was disapointed when I found out the on the Canon 30D, you can lock the AE by pressing the * button but it only remains like that for 4 seconds. That does not give time to rotate the cam (very calm) and take the second picture. It seems that the best result is to have AE lock for all the pictures. It seems that I can have the * button press (not releasing it at all) while taking all the pictures. But then I have to be very good with my fingers, keeping the * button down while presing the shutter, rotating the panohead, taking another picture, etc. I wish that there was a setting to leave it until you say enough. Any ideas or expierience with this?

4) When stiching the pictures, every time I have to set more Matching points. Why? I thought that panoweaver saves time. Am I doing something wrong?

I hope you guys can help me with these. Thanks!

Omar

Omar,

You should take your camera lens of auto-focus and set to "infinity" and allow for manual focus.

AE-L is not required if you shoot in Manual Mode and keep all the settings the same and shot in RAW. You must then process the RAW files keeping all the settings the same and this requires you adjust the Vignetting for best blending results. The easiest way is to adjust image 1 and then apply these setting to the others in the panoramic set via batch made.

You should not need to add matching points if you are processing correctly and that each image has enough items of differing shapes and colours to help it auto match. Mirrors, no detail (like blue sky) and repetitive patterns can confuse the stitcher.

Regards, Smooth  

In a word, first learn how to take panorama photos and if this step is well done, it will takes less time to process in Photoshop or Panoweaver 4.

Danny,

    Learning how to take a panorama photo is what I am doing isn't it? I know that Easypano support by phone is bad and english skills terrible, so I will assume that at least you should not use a sarcastic answer.

Smooth,

    Thanks for your answer. If I use the manual focus for every shot will increase the time I spend on taking a whole tour if my idea is to use this for realty virtual tours right?  I had a set of photos where I did not have to add any matching points, yeah, photos I took already. I will play with manual mode, I guess this will take a little longer because I am not familiar with it. When you say that I should keep the same settings, could you help me more on that. I guess that I did not wanted to play with making settings for every picture. I will appreciate if you can guide me more. Thanks, Omar

Omar,

You will not need to focus if you have set the lens to "infinity" assuming you are using a Sigma 8mm it is very hard to get out of focus. Just set it once and shoot the series of shots.

When you shoot RAW you must edit/process one image in the panoramic set first. You will set Exposure, Saturation, Vignetting, Chromatic Aberration etc until it is pleasing to the eye (a nice photo). Then you can save this setting (in Photoshop CS2 it is a .xmp file) you then can batch select the other images in the panoramic series that are still to be processed and apply previous conversion (right mouse click) or manually or open each image separately and then browse to your saved .xmp and apply it.

Once you have done this you can then save as .tif, .bmp, .png etc and then stitch them up with Panoweaver.

Regards, Smooth

Smooth,

    So I need to set everything manual then. I need move the lense setting from AF (auto focus) to Manual, and also use the mode dial to M (manual exposure), right? The other problema I have is that if I stich 4 drum photos I get the panorama right away but when I add  or try to stich 4 Drum plus T (top) I always get prompted to get more Matching points. Any ideas? I hope you can help me with both questions. Thanks. Omar

Omar,

Yes, Manual Focus and Manual Exposure that is correct. When stitching 4+T  (Drum) you need to select this from the start in Panoweaver 4.0 from the drop down.

If you are prompted for manual control points you must add them (accurately) this is because the "auto" stitch could not find enough matching point is the scene automatically. This is problematic with blue sky without detail. Typically shooting the "up" (top) shot is not necessary as you can patch, clone and heal this area in Photoshop pretty easily.

Regards, Smooth 

I have been playing a little more. I will set a web page so that you can see my results. I am using manual focus set to the infinity mark. So far I have been able to stich more panoramas after I save my stiching parameters without hardly adding more points or even not adding anything at all. I have this 5 scenarios:

1) Focus Manual set to infinity, Mode Dial to Manual Exposure, 0"6 for shutter speed and Quality to L.

2) Focus Auto, Mode Dial to Manual Exposure, 0"6 for shutter speed and  and Quality to L.

3) Focus Auto, Mode Dial to P, Using AE Lock and Quality to L.

4) Focus Manual set to infinity, Mode Dial to Manual Exposure, 0"6 for shutter speed and Quality to RAW.

I am working on getting Photoshop CS2 to be able to use the RAW files. So far from the first, the option 3 created a more detailed or quality panorama. Maybe in manual exposure I need to pay attention to the aperture value. I am learning a little more on how to use my camera, panoweaver and my pano head. I am learning a lot but your help has been great. Please let me know any more details on the Shutter speed and aperture and if I need to focus to infinity.

Thanks! Omar