Equipment Used

Cameras

Olympus D300

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.

Most of my early panoramas are shot with the Olympus.

Pentax P&S

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.

Canon EOS Rebel 2000

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.

Canon EF24-85 f/3.5-4.5 zoom

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.

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8

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 very fast.

Canon EF 70-200 f/4L

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

Tokina 28-70 f/2.8 ATX PRO

This lens, fast and sharp, is a great bargain and will be my new wide angle lens.

Olympus Stylus Epic

This astounding camera costs $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.

Software

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. The two best for me are PhotoVista (now from MGI) and Panorama Factory

These two programs blend very differently so each is right for different jobs. PhotoVista uses sharper blends and can handle scenes like the Burning Man panoramas where people are moving between shots. It's the only package for this, and it's also quick and very easy to use.

Panorama Factory is more complex but can handle some problems PhotoVista can't, and lets you save your state (in a bulky way) to do things over again. It's the only package that can handle the problems of parallax you get when you actually move your tripod around, as you need to do when taking a shot from a building. There you can shoot out the windows and eliminate them, as though you were standing in air.

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.

Pano Head

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.

Tripod

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.

Film

I almost always shoot on Superia 100 or Reala 100. Sometimes the P&S has 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.

Scanning

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.