Learn how to optimize the Panasonic DMC-LX3 for a panorama stitch picture
Tags:Panasonic DMC-LX3: Set for Panoramic Scene,digital camera tutorial,how to use a digital camera,lb guides,panasonic dmc-lx3,photography lessons,set for panoramic scene
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Transcript
For Panoramic pictures, it is really quite simple, there are really just a couple of things you need to remember and that are one with panoramic images. What you need to do, you’re taking a serious of images and the exposure needs to be consistent through out the entire series.
This camera does not have panorama stitch mode, so what you need to do is set the manual mode to lock that exposure. The way I know what the exposure should be set to is very simple, in the program mode, if I press my shutter button halfway I’ll get the values from my aperture and shutter speed, and in this case, because my aperture is 2.8 and that’s a little bit wide for a landscape, what I want to do is set this a little bit smaller so the entire landscape will be in focus. I’ll just release the button using my quick menu joystick, I’ll go down decreasing the size of the aperture, 7.1 is just fine, that’s still in my case 1/80 which I can handhold, and now I know that with an aperture of 7.1 or 8, I can choose 1/60 or 1/80 and I should be just fine.
So I’ll move my mode dial to the manual mode. And right now, I’m looking at the shutter speed so I’ll increase that to 1/80 and then I’ll go to the left to change my aperture to 7.1. Now, when I press my shutter button halfway the meter comes up and you can see that the camera indicates I am properly exposed. So this is great. I do not want to use the flash assuming we’re outdoors and not taking the picture of the room, then the flash is not going to do anything, an even if we were indoors, I wouldn’t want to use the flash because really when you stitch this pictures together it’s not going to provide for a very consistent lighting.
So, don’t use the flash, start on the one hand of your picture, take the shot. Remember what is on the left or right hand side of the frame, and then move that toward the center of the frame. You want to overlap about 50% of the picture. So once you have your second picture, you can press it again, my settings stay consistent so I know my exposure is going to be consistent and take another shot. And you can keep panning across the landscape taking as many pictures as you want, overlapping about half of the picture over the previous picture.
Finally, before I let you go taking pictures of panoramas, I just want to give you one last tip, and that is locking the manual focus. This can also be very, very important and it depends on the distance of your subject from the camera, even if your focus would be set to infinity, it may be important to lock the focus manually and keep that consistent as well, just like with the exposure. Without a focus camera, I’ve run into the situation where I focused in one place and then my next picture, the focus would be very different and the stitch won’t come out very nice.
So locking the manual focus is very simple. Press the shutter button halfway, and then after you locked that focus, move your focusing switch down to MF for m annual focus. Now when I release the manual focus, just lock at the same distance from the subject as the auto focus would lock. So now, I am totally ready with my manual focus locked, my exposure locked and I can take my series of images.
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I've tutored thousands of digital camera users since 1998. I love this subject and want to share the knowledge I've gained over the years with as many as possible. I hope you enjoy my video guides.
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