Panoramics with a long lens

There are three great reasons to get into photo stitching. Photo stitching gives you the opportunity to make massive high resolution images which can be printed BIG, you can shoot as wide an angle as your heart could desire and Photo Stitching with a long lens gives the finished image a unique perspective which is un-achievable using a wide angle lens.

But why would you want to use a long lens to shoot a panoramic image?

Look at these two panoramic images of the rocks at Hurst Spit. Even though they’re small you can see they’re very different, yet both were taken from virtually the same spot! The top image was taken with a wide 10mm lens and the other was created by photo stitching together seven images taken with a focal length of 135mm.

I'm not saying one is better than the other or one is right and the other wrong. I'm showing you a creative choice which can be used to make your composition more interesting. Focal length and composition are best mate and interact with each other like crazy

Before you sit down at your computer to spend a happy evening photo stitching, you must have good images to work with. By good I mean they must have consistent exposure, white balance and be composed in such a way that Photoshop’s ‘Photomerge’ function can join them up accurately.  Otherwise you’ll see the joins and your picture will be spoilt.

In part 2 I’ll show you how to stitch your images together using Photoshop's Photomerge command.