Picture: Panorama overlooking the Emigrant Wilderness at sunset near Sonora Pass, Tuolumne County, California
Click here or on the image to see the photo larger @ 1024 pixels.
This is another of the images taken from my recent trip to the Sonora Pass region of the Sierra Nevada. My buddy who was with me is a big panoramic shooter, and at his urging, I’ve started messing around creating a few pano images using the PhotoMerge feature in Photoshop. Unfortunately I’m still quite new at this, and at the angst of my friend who is quite versed in this format, I still haven’t yet invested in a dedicated pano head for my tripod. If I feel I’m being more successful at capturing good panos, that piece of equipment will soon appear near the top of my shopping list.
Pano heads are not useful for subjects, such as the one in this blog, with no foregrounds. Also a two-axis pano head is quite cumbersome, but a one-axis head if not very effective if you do not have an assortment of lenses with shift capacity.
QT sort of responded to my comment, which was going to be along the lines of “what does a pano head do?” Also, “if it ain’t broke, why fix it”! Your pano looks fine to me. I’m no expert either, though. I recently figured out the nodal point for a couple of lenses I use for pano’s (using a single-axis focusing rail), only to be surprised at there being no difference when I used the nodal points. I seem to get more bang for my buck by doing more overlap — more like 25-30% rather than 50% — than doing the nodal point. More experimentation is needed, though.
This is a gorgeous image, Gary! I really love the light kissing the tops of the peaks…my favorite time of day.
I agree with QT–you don’t really need a pano head for images like this. Its just that when you have things in front of you (say 10-15 feet with a wide angle), you can get parallax distortion without a pano head.
Just think of it as less stuff you have to carry! 😉
You are on a roll Gary. Great stuff.