How to Photograph Panoramas Without a Wide Angle Lens

Photography Tips

So, you want to make breathtaking panoramic landscape photos or super wide cityscapes but you could never afford and ultra-wide angle lens. Don’t worry. David Bergman has simple tips that will allow you to make those breathtaking photos, without ever needing an expensive lenses. Interested? Watch this:

The trick is in shooting multiple photos and then combining them together in Photoshop. Added bonus? This approach doesn’t even need a tripod or a panoramic head (though those things would certainly help).

Here are some things to keep in mind when shooting your photos:

Switch to manual focus and manual exposure mode

You don’t want the lens switching focus between shots or the camera automatically adjusting exposure in between shots.

Switch to manual focusing and manual exposure.

Shoot vertically

Shooting vertically lets you capture more of the scene with a lot of space both at the top and bottom of the frame. When you combine everything in Photoshop a little bit of cropping is inevitable. This technique allows for that.

Shoot vertically.

Overlap the shots by about a third of the frame

This will allow the stitching software to seamlessly stitch the images together.

Move your camera on an axis

Imagine that the camera is on a stick and you’re rotating your camera between each frame on that stick.

Rotate the camera on the nodal point of the lens.

Imagine that the stick is located right through what is the nodal point of your lens—right at the middle part of the lens.

There are several software options for stitching the images, so use whichever editing program you prefer.

Have you made panoramas this way? Share your photos in the comments!