Shooting Stitched Panoramas Handheld

I’ve been shooting panoramas for a long time. Going back to film days, when I’d shoot the images on film, scan the film, and then stitch the digital tiles using panorama stitching software.

As with so many aspects of photography, digital capture makes things much easier and quicker.

But I think there’s a bit of a misconception out there that shooting panoramas requires fancy equipment such as panorama heads and heavy-duty tripods.¹

Sure, you can certainly use fancy equipment. And there can definitely be benefits to using it. But you don’t have to use it, and by shooting fast and light, you’ll be able to panoramize (Ed. note: yes, I know that’s not a word) many more scenes than you otherwise would be able to.

Some cameras have a built-in panorama mode. They’re simple to use and very convenient, but they’re usually quite limited in their flexibility and resolution. That’s not the kind of panorama I’m talking about here. I’m talking about shooting a series of full-resolution images and then using panorama stitching software to merge them together.

I’m also not talking about VR panoramas. It’s certainly possible to shoot those with the approach I discuss below, but spherical panoramas tend to exaggerate any parallax alignment issues.

After all, the classic way to shoot them is with carefully aligned and leveled tiles using a tripod and, ideally, a special tripod head that eliminates parallax error.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing it that way; it’s still the gold standard if you’re trying to be careful about it. If I’m shooting for clients, that’s absolutely the way I’ll go when possible. So if that’s your thing, go forth and prosper.

Why Tripods & Panorama Heads Can Limit Your Options

But it also limits your opportunities somewhat. For a few reasons.

• Tripods can be a pain to carry. Most of the time, I prefer not to carry one and have developed various alternatives and workarounds that work well for me.
• Tripods limit where you can shoot. I’m thinking mostly here of places like interiors. Maybe there are security guards who’ll chase you away. Maybe there are just too many people around making it unwise to set up a likely tripping hazard.
• Panorama rigs are cumbersome to set up. Meaning you might miss a fleeting moment or just shoot slowly.
  

So don’t let the lack of a tripod or panorama head prevent you from trying a panorama of the scene that catches your eye. If you’re not bogged down with that gear, it can actually open up all sorts of new opportunities.

Extra Opportunities of On-the-Fly Panorama Shooting

So if a tripod and panorama tripod head can be limiting, you can have much more freedom without them.

By that, I mostly mean freedom of where you can shoot panoramas. Basically anywhere you can take your camera.

So I’m not suggesting that this is a better way. It’s simply not an either/or kind of situation. All I’m suggesting is that you can still shoot fun and interesting panoramas even without fancy panorama gear.

Here are a few practical examples. I’m mostly focusing here on examples where it simply wasn’t an option to use a tripod and panorama head. In fact, all of the panoramas on this page were shot hand-held.

My Method for Shooting On-the-Fly Opportunistic Panoramas

When you’re shooting on the fly, it’s certainly true that there’s an increased risk of problems. The most obvious are parallax errors and camera shake. It’s just something you have to factor in and treat as experimental; some will probably fail.

But with some basic precautions that become second nature the more you do them, you can also get some great results.

Keep the Exposure Consistent Frame to Frame

This might be the biggest one: exposure consistency is crucial for better results.

If you’re shooting completely in manual mode, you’re all set.

But if you’re using any automatic exposure settings at all, even if it’s just Auto ISO, that pose problems for seamless stitching, especially in large smooth tones in the frame, such as a blue sky. That’s because the camera’s auto exposure will almost certainly calculate different values as you move from shot to shot in the sequence.

There are two ways to tackle this problem.

1. Switch to manual-everything mode. It’s reliable and almost fool-proof. One thing to watch, though, is that switching to manual mode often doesn’t automatically turn off Auto ISO, which can undo the point of doing it. You might need to turn that off separately.
2. Use exposure lock. This is my preferred method, because I don’t need to change anything from my usual single-frame settings. I usually assign one of the camera’s customizable buttons for this purpose. On my Z8, for example, I use one of the buttons on the front of the camera next to the lens so that I can comfortably hold it in a normal vertical shooting position.
   

Set Exposure on the Most Important Part of the Scene

I always set the exposure from the most important part of panoramic scene. If I’m using an auto exposure, I’ll point the camera at the key area, press and hold the lock exposure button, reposition the camera to the starting point, and shoot through the sequence.

In the Lincoln Memorial example I’ve posted here, I set the exposure for the statue. If I’d set it on the first frame at far left, the image would have been horribly overexposed and blown out. But I wanted this look of the statue standing out from its dark, cavernous surroundings.

Be Still

What I mean by that is don’t just pan and shoot. That’s what built-in panorama modes encourage you to do, whether it’s in your iPhone/Android phone or a point-and-shoot camera that has a built-in panorama mode.

The problem with that is that you’re almost certainly going to end up with a series of blurred photos.

What you want to do is to treat it as what it is: a series of individual photos. And unless you’re using a superfast shutter speed, burst mode probably isn’t going to work a lot better.

So make sure you’re still for each and every photo. If that means using a faster shutter speed, so be it. But don’t be rotating as you press the shutter.

Minimize Movement

Since you’re not using a special tripod head to reduce parallax error, there is a pretty high risk of parallax errors as you move through the sequence. The risk is highest for parts of the scene that are physically closest to you. And that can come in expected places, such as cobblestones on the street or a tiled floor or a decorated ceiling.

While it’s hard to eliminate that risk completely, you can minimize it by reducing movement of the camera between shots. I don’t mean the direct it’s pointed–you have to cover the scene, after all. I mean the physical repositioning of the camera. So rather than rotating using your feet, you can try just rotating your upper body. Physically smaller lenses also help. It’s by no means foolproof in the way a good panorama head can be, but it’s at least worth trying.

Don’t Forget to Overlap

For the stitching software to work effectively, there needs to be enough overlap that it can pick out details to align.

But it doesn’t have to be super precise. I just eyeball it, somewhere around 1/5 to 1/3 of the frame.

In general, it’s better to have too much overlap than not enough. If you have too much overlap, you can always crop and refine the overlap later. But if you don’t have enough, there’s not much you can do (this is not a good use case for generative AI fill).

Shoot Vertically

This isn’t a must-do, but it will give you much higher resolution to work with and a more comfortable aspect ratio for the final image.

Rather than shooting the tile images in horizontal/landscape model, I always shoot them with the camera in vertical/portrait orientation. It allows for much higher resolution of the end product as well as a better working area.

An exception is if I’m shooting a vertical panorama, in which case it’s reversed.

Things Not to Fuss About

There are some things that don’t really warrant too much concern for this type of panorama shooting.

• It really doesn’t matter much whether you shoot from left to right or right to left. Stitching software can figure it out pretty easily. I usually shoot left to right, but that’s mostly out of habit.
• Precise overlap. I just eyeball it, but it’s better to err on the side of too much than not enough.

Panorama Stitching Software

The same software that you’d otherwise use for stitching can be used whether you’ve taken the shots with a tripod or not. Lightroom Classic‘s built-in panorama stitcher (under Photo Merge) is a simple and convenient place to start. Hugin is a good free app (installation can be a bit tedious on some systems).

If you happen to be using PTGui Pro, which is what I use and is about the most flexible and powerful option still available, there are some settings that can help.

• In the Optimizer Tab, choose Minimize lens distortion: Heavy + Lens Shift. This is one of PTGui Pro’s Viewpoint Correction tools.
• For problematic alignment at the edges of the frame, it can sometimes make sense to mask out some of that area on one of the images that overlap. You can find more about how to do that here.
  

1. I’m referring here to specialized tripod heads that move the nodal point (or, more correctly, the “no parallax point”) back to the rotation point. Many regular tripod heads can rotate 360 degrees, and they’re sometimes marked as “panoramic,” but that’s not what I’m referring to here. [↩]