What makes a great panoramic photo?
A great panoramic photo all starts with the camera. If you haven’t seen Part 1, A Camera Love Story that Was Never Meant to Be, make sure you check it out. I talk about the camera that I used for this digital panorama challenge, the Fujifilm GFX 50R. It is the perfect camera for this challenge because it has a large medium format sized sensor. It also allows you to choose the 65:24 crop ratio so you can easily compose panoramic images.
When you think about panoramic photos, what kind of photo do you think of? Many people think of a landscape image but there are so many other panoramic images that you can make that are not landscapes. I really wanted to try to capture some non-traditional panoramic images.
Shopper walking past street cleaner in Singapore. This is not your traditional panorama photo. I absolutely loved the cinematic storytelling look and feel of the 65:24 format.
Composing a Panoramic Photo – What do You Look For?
A strongly composed image is a strongly composed image. So I wanted to use many of the techniques that I would use to capture any other image when capturing a panoramic photo. Some, like rule of thirds, probably translate really well to the longer format. While others, like capturing images in vertical and horizontal format might not work as well. The key for me was to try to go beyond the idea that panoramic images are just landscape images.
Rule of Thirds
One of the techniques that I often use when composing images is the rule of thirds where I put my subject off-centre. When you put the subject off to one side with a panoramic camera, the effect is magnified and gives a lot of negative space for the image. I really loved this look when composing a panoramic image. Of course there is always time to break the rules but if you are capturing a panoramic photo, I would recommend trying rule of thirds.
The subject and focus of the image is in the right third of the frame. I love the negative space created by the pillars in the rest of the image.
Details
Another tool in your photography toolkit is getting in close and looking for the details in an image. Even though the lens I was using wasn’t a macro lens, I wanted to try to get close to some subjects and capture images with a blurry background.
The GF 32-64mm F4 lens that I was using focuses down to 50cm at the wide end and 60cm at the longer end. I enjoyed trying to find those pictures that other people might walk past and miss. I also tried to look for the picture within a picture. To do this, I captured an image. Then I got closer and captured another image. I kept getting closer and closer and closer until my lens wasn’t able to focus any more.
It would be fun to try a macro panorama challenge with the GF 120mm F4 Macro lens that Fujifilm makes.
Focusing close on boots in water on a rusty barrel gives a blurry background.
Portraits
Something else I knew I wanted to try was to capture some panoramic portraits. I was lucky enough to find a number of people that allowed me to make pictures of them. I used the same technique that I would with a non-panoramic format and tried to put them off to one side of the frame. This gives the viewer a chance to look at the subject and then explore the rest of the frame. I didn’t want to put them in the middle and split the frame in two.
I did try to use different focal lengths for the portraits but mostly used the longer end of the 32-64mm lens. The 64mm end of the lens acts like a 50mm lens on a regular full frame DSLR camera. As always with portraits, I worked quickly and efficiently while still varying my composition to give myself a variety of images.
A panoramic portrait allows you to showcase the environment and the subject.
I would love to get a longer lens and try to exclusively capture some panoramic portraits. Fujifilm makes a GF 110mm F2 lens that is the equivalent to a 87mm lens on a regular full frame DSLR camera. Or perhaps the GF 120mm F4 macro would be great (equivalent to 95mm regular full frame DSLR camera). That way I could get close up to my subject and capture some details in their face in a panoramic image. This is something I would love to try out in the future.
Vertical Images
One of the things that people don’t often think of when it comes to panorama photos is vertical panoramas. Perhaps this is because we often view images on a horizontal screen like a computer. We can view vertical images on our phones but even then, a vertical panorama wouldn’t fit on the whole screen and you can’t easily see the whole photo at the same time.
I actually thought I would like vertical shots more than I did. Maybe it is because I am viewing them on a screen and there is so much space on either side of the image. That isn’t to say that I didn’t like the vertical panoramas. I think the vertical images are quite unique because we don’t see them very often. If I printed out a vertical image, I think I would like the image a lot more.
Foreground Interest
Another excellent tool in my Photography Toolkit is Foreground Interest. When I find a scene that I like, I look for something that I can put in the foreground to improve the image. This worked really well in the panoramic format as there was much more space in the frame than I was used to with a regular format image.
Getting up close to one of the air conditioner condenser not only works as foreground interest, but also gives you a close up look at one of the units that fill the back alley scene.
Movement
One of my favourite tools in my photography toolkit is capturing movement. This can be done in a number of ways. First I can pan with the subject as it moves through the frame which creates a moving blur in the background. Another option is to stay still and allow something to move through the frame which gives a sharp background and blurs whatever was moving.
When capturing panoramas, I ended up mostly capturing movement by staying still and allowing people to move through the frame. I didn’t bring along a tripod so I had to rely on handholding the camera.
The blur of moving people adds to the overall feel of this image that works well in the panoramic format.
There are a couple of options that people may use to create panoramic images with their regular camera. However, each of these has limitations and can’t do what a camera with a dedicated panoramic format can.
Why not just stitch images together?
One of the most common ways to create panoramic images is to take a series of images and stitch them together in a program like Photoshop. This technique works best when you use a tripod and make sure that the camera is level and can rotate smoothly on the horizontal axis. You also want to make sure you overlap the images you capture so they can be stitched together easily.
You also need to make sure that the exposure is consistent across all the frames so this involves putting the camera in manual exposure so nothing changes between images. In addition to this, the type of lens you use is important because if you use a lens that is a wide angle, the perspective of the final image will look strange. This technique won’t work well with all lenses.
If I tried to capture this image by stitching images together, it may not work very well. I would have to be very careful with my lens choice and amount of overlap of images otherwise the lines may warp and look strange.
Another limitation to stitching images together is the types of images you can capture. You can’t capture images that involve movement because when stitching the images together the movement won’t line up. Think about all the variables involved in capturing a panning image (the moving subject, the speed at which you pan etc) and then trying to recreate those across a series of frames would be impossible.
On a similar note, if the timing of the shot is important, then you can’t stitch a series of images together. Stitching images together may work for a landscape image but not for the types of panoramic images I was trying to capture in this digital panorama challenge. Remember, I wanted to go beyond the idea of a panoramic image as a landscape and capture more dynamic photos. I can’t do that when stitching images together.
An example of an image that I can’t capture by stitching photos together. Timing is important in this image and I simply can’t capture this image by stitching images together.
Capturing close panoramic portraits by stitching together images is close to impossible. I really like to be able to interact with my subject to try to get the look or reaction that captures that moment. Working quickly and efficiently helps me to do that. So having to capture a number of photos that I would stitch together later wouldn’t work for me.
Trying to overlap a series of images while close to the subject in a portrait like this would be virtually impossible as any movement or change in the subject would result in the images not lining up.
The other thing about capturing a number of images and stitching them together is there is quite a lot of work that needs to be done afterwards. You have a series of images that you may need to adjust and then combine together into one image. A camera that capture the panoramic image in camera is more efficient and your best option.
Why not just crop with any other camera?
A second option for creating a panoramic image is to capture a regular photo with your camera and then crop it later to a panoramic format. This is something that I have done with images in the past when putting them into a book. I love the look of a double page spread where one image spans across both pages.
The issue that I have with cropping a standard size image is framing. It isn’t easy to accurately frame your shot when you can’t see the boundaries of your composition in the viewfinder. There have been times when I tried to crop a regular shot into a panoramic image for a book and it doesn’t work because of the way I captured it. A small change here or there would have made the difference but I couldn’t accurately see the boundaries at the time I was capturing the image.
The process of framing the shot with the panoramic crop is SO important to the process. Using a camera which allows me to compose the image and see the what I need to include or exclude was crucial to getting the image that I wanted. I really LOVED the framing images with the 65:24 format. It just felt different than capturing a standard image and cropping it afterwards. When capturing panoramic images, you get the panoramic mindset where you look and find opportunities for panoramic images. It is much different than capturing an image and thinking about how you might crop it later.
This image is an example of the panoramic mindset. I was always thinking about the panoramic format and looking for images like this one that work well as panoramas.
Final Thoughts
I really loved the Digital Panorama Challenge. The panoramic format offers some fantastic compositional opportunities and I really enjoyed looking at the world with a panoramic mindset. The Fujifilm GFX 50R is an amazing camera for this challenge and I can definitely see myself getting one in the future. I would love to try some different lenses like the wider GF 23mm F4 (which is the equivalent to a 18mm lens on a 35mm camera) and the the GF 120mm F4 Macro or the GF 110 F2. So stay tuned for more panorama images.
As always, it is perfectly ok to break the rules of composition like this image with a centred subject.
Please check out the video of part 2 of the Digital Panorama Challenge to see how I captured the images.
