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Currently most panoramas are shot with My current main camera is the Canon 40D, a 10 megapixel DSLR. Other recent panos were shot with the 20D, an 8 megapixel predecessor.
My favourite lens is the 50mm f/1.8, oddly Canon's cheapest lens but one of the sharpest. Very long panoramas are all shot with this. Wider up-down field panoramas are shot with the EF-S 10-22m wide angle zoom.
From time to time I will also shoot with the 70-200L zoom.
Most are shot on the Kaidan Kiwi-L, but a few are shot by hand or with the regular tripod.
Most recent panoramas are built with Panorama Factory version 4 on Ubuntu linux under Wine, then tweaked in Photoshop CS2.
When I got this digital camera, at 1024x768 it was top of the line. Today it's left in the dust, but it's what got me back into photography. It made me realize that when I got a good shot, I wished I had it at higher resolution than the camera did. So I went back to film. Digitals aren't yet near the resolution of film so I am still shooting on film, but since for panoramas I tend to only do about 2000-2500 pixels high, the next generation of digitals like the EOS D30 will probably do the job for me for panoramas.
Some of my earliest panoramas are shot with the Olympus.
My P&S had been lost, but my girlfriend carried this Point and Shoot. While the zoom lens is slow, it's pretty decent, and sometimes we would shoot panoramas on it. The early film panoramas, like Burning Man 98 and Burney Falls, are shot on this.
I like the Rebel 2000 body, even though near the bottom of the line, because it is light and still has most of the features I need. It's great for travel.
This 4 megapixel digital is super-small, so I can carry it with me wherever I go. If I have the D30 or D60 I shoot with that of course, but if not, this will do the job. It also has, as many new cameras have, a panorama mode that makes it easy to lock the exposure and place overlaps. And in portrait mode it's as high as the D30 in resolution, though the lens is not as good.
This superb digital camera takes EOS lenses, and is very low noise. While film has more resolution, digital cameras are better for panoramas because it is far easier to get even exposure on them. Once you set things manually two images will expose exactly the same.
On film, you can set the film exposure manually, but then you have to work to get the scanners to not alter the exposure or colour correct. That's hard to do with lab scanning, so you often need to scan on your own.
The D30's large sensor produces very clean images. Because you always shoot in portrait mode, you get images 2200 pixels high, which is pretty good, suitable for 12" high printed panoramas.
Panoramas shot after July of 2002 will be on this camera. Like the D30, but 6 million pixels (which is all I ever scanned film for panoramas with one exception.) Ie. Panoramas almost 3000 pixels high.
Starting in 2004 I moved to this 8 megapixel camera with great low noise.
This lens was used for most of my panoramics, especially the 24mm wide end. The lens has a great range, and does good wide angle though in time I found it to be overly distorted which interfered with some panos and I moved to better lenses. A few narrow panos are shot at the 85mm end, like Burning Man 99.
This prime lens has been used for several panoramics, including the great Lake Powell shot. It's crisp and sharp for when a narrower field is needed, and fast.
This new lens, in the "L" series is expensive but this lens may be the sharpest zoom anybody makes. I'll be using it for all my narrow field panoramas. You can see it in some like the Treasure Island night view of SF
This lens, fast, sharp and cheap, was my wide angle until I switched to the D30/D60 and needed wider. I sold this.
This super wide angle zoom is a must on the D30 and D60, which have a 1.6x narrower field of view than a 35mm camera, so the 17mm length looks like a 27mm length. Still, I wanted sharper so I got the
This lens is under-rated because it is not very sharp at f/1.8. However, it is reportedly shaper at f/2.8 than the Canon f/2.8 is. And it's very sharp at f/8 which is of course where I shoot most daytime panos since I am lways on a tripod.
This astounding camera costs only $89 and has a super-sharp fixed f/2.8 35mm lens. It fits in a shirt pocket, so I carry it around and sometimes use it for panoramics handheld or on a mini tripod. This camera is the best bargain in the world, I suggest everybody get one. The best camera in the world does not good if you don't carry it. This one you will carry -- if you don't have an always-carry camera, the link above will take you do a decent camera store.
The great panorama inside Bryce Canyon was shot with this lens. It has a bit of problem with light fall-off. I'm waiting for pano software vendors to get around to correcting light fall-off and vignetting.
These days the Canon S40 is my portable camera
I took my first panorama in Hawai`i and said, "there ought to be software to automate blending these." I started working on it but soon lots of packages showed up, starting with Quicktime VR.
I started with a package called PhotoVista. It's very easy to use, and produces decent panoramas, using a special blending technique which even handles shots with moving people. Most of my early panoramas were done with this. However, it has not been updated much over the years and lacks the ability to do good fine tuning on images and won't run on Linux under wine.
Today my main package is Panorama Factory
This is a quite sophisticated program which allows detailed fine tuning. It also now allows you to custom draw the blends so you can choose between wide blends as used by most packages and custom narrow blends that deal better with moving objects. It is slower and harder to use, but for serious work you need its power. Its fine tuning system also is able to handle paralax, as you get when you do handhelds or move around a building.
It does not really do multi-row panoramas (I seek a good package for those.)
Of course, there is always cleanup to do in Photoshop after stitching. Plus my various haze removal techniques still under experimentation. In PS, I will crop, improve contrast, correct colour and sometimes boost saturation to make Superia seem more like Velvia.
For the best panoramas, you want a Panoramic tripod head. Such devices have a level, to keep your panorama level, and arms that let you spin the camera around its "nodal point." This is the place where the light rays from the lens come to a single point before they spread to form an image on the film plane. It is almost never above the tripod mounting screw. I have the Kiwi-L from Kaidan.
While the detent disks of the Kiwi-+ sound handy, they limit your use of longer focal lengths and unusual focal lengths.
When driving to my shoot, I carry my heavier Bogen tripod, but pano shooting doesn't require that steady a tripod unless there is a problem with wind. I always shoot with a cable release, and am usually shooting sunlit scenes. So I also have a variety of mini tripods for travel and also sometimes shoot with a monopod. I will stick the spike of my walking stick into the ground and spin it around the spike.
Now I have a bogen carbon fiber tripod. Expensive, but a dream to carry. At first I wondered about spending $400 on tripod legs, but after carrying it up to the top of the Great Wall of China, it was worth every penny.
In my film days, I almost always shot on Superia 100 or Reala 100. Sometimes the P&S had Superia 400. I also love the results from Velvia, but when you are intending to scan, negative film is easier than slide film. You can get it scanned more places and it records more information. However, sometimes Velvia can't be beat.
I always get a Kodak Picture CD with my developing. At 1500x1000, this is often enough (in portrait mode) for a decent panorama, certainly a prototype one. If I like what I see, I can re-scan using my HP Photosmart, which is quite inexpensive and produces nice 3000x2000 scans. If I were buying a new scanner I would get the Nikon Coolscan 2000 or Polaroid Sprintscan 4000.
I've also tried various minilabs for scanning. Generally forget it unless they have a clean low-dust lab somewhere they send to.
I also tried Dale Labs. They scan well when they get it right, but I tried them 3 times and they screwed up things each time in different ways, and in the last round cut my negatives mid-exposure, so I've sworn off them for a while. Too bad, their price of $8.50 to develop and scan at 3000x2000 is hard to beat.
Nowadays I shoot almost all panos on the digitals (20D/40D). My days of scanning panoramas are long past.