How to Create Panoramas with a Digital SLR and Hugin

Posted: 8 November 2009 - Updated 14 May 2011

This is a step-by-step guide to making panoramas with any digital camera that has a Manual mode and shoots in raw. Often these don't have a "panorama mode". If the camera does, the approach described here will give you more control and better results.

As with most things, there are other ways of doing this, but this my preferred technique to get consistent seamless results. This tutorial will use images from Cape Town in South Africa as an example.

Step 1: Take the source photos

This tutorial uses images that have been captured hand-held in portrait orientation with an Olympus E-30 & 9-18mm lens at 9mm (ie. 18mmmm in Full Frame equivalent). You generally don't need a special tripod for this type of shot. The exceptions are:

• when you have close foreground objects that would produce what is called parallax error
• low light situations such as at night.

Camera Settings

1. Set the camera to shoot in "RAW" mode.
2. Set the camera to Manual mode "M".
3. Set the ISO to a fixed value - I recommend ISO 100.
4. Set the aperture. For optimum depth of field I recommend an aperture of 5.6 on an Olympus DSL-R or micro 4/3 camera, f8 on APS-C format and f11 on a full frame camera.
5. Adjust the shutter speed to get a proper exposure. Given that your scene may have extremes of brightness and dark you may need to find a balance between these areas. Use your built in metering as a guide. If there is a big range, I'd aim to preserve highlights and have other parts slightly underexposed instead.
6. Take a marker shot so that later you can easily recognise your panorama images amongst others - easiest is a photo of your hand
7. Take a series of images with an overlap of about 1/3 of the image
8. Take a second marker photo of your hand to identify the end
9. Review the images to check exposure and composition
10. Re-shoot if necessary

Note: In cases where the subject is moving, such as the water in the above scene, there might be minor flaws in the image because the scene has changed between frames. Sometimes a wide angle lens can be used to keep moving parts in a single frame.

Step 2: Develop RAW images

This section goes through the steps in Adobe Lightroom. If you're using other software, set the same white balance in all images and to keep all adjustments identical between images.

1. Select all the panorama source images in the library display
2. Click on the "Develop" tab on the top
3. With the first image selected, adjust the White Balance slider slighly to ensure a custom white balance.
4. Apply desired image adjustments according to your tastes or aims. I recommend fixing any chromatic aberration in this stage.
5. Click on the "Sync" button in the bottom right corner (all images need to be selected). Make sure all boxes are checked.
6. Click on "develop and Save Image" - I save as a 100% quality JPG file at full size and with no sharpening applied.

Step 3: Stitch the Panorama with Hugin

I use Hugin to stitch Panoramas. This is a free, open source program. There are versions that work on OSX, Windows and Linux.

In comparing this to alternatives, Ive found that it produces more consistent, seamless results. It has a lot of control over things like blending and the type of projection. It works for panoramas taken vertically or horizontally and for multi-row panoramas. Being open source, you can also download and use it free.

1. Open files under the "assistant" tab.
2. Enter in the focal length multiplier - ie. "2" for an Olympus DSLR, "1.6" for Canon APSC, "1.5" for Nikon, Sony and Pentax and "1" for full-frame DSLRs - usisally this will be picked up automatically.
3. Click on the "align" button & wait for the program to calculate and find control points
4. In the panorama preview, adjust the horizon point if necessary. Use the "drag" feature to move the panorama around until it looks right
5. Try selecting a few different projections in this preview to see how they look
6. Adjust the crop if its not how you want it. Usually I leave cropping to the final stage.
7. When you're happy with the general look of the panorama, close the preview
8. Click the "stitching" tab
9. Click both the "Calculate Field of View" and Calculate Optimal Size" buttons. This re-calculates how big your panorama is going to be.
10. Click the "Stitch Now!" button and enter a new file name to save the panorama. This can take a while with big panoramas!

Step 4: Edit the panorama in Photoshop or photo editing software

Although you can do some of this directly in Hugin, I prefer to do it in Photoshop, because I then have better control over the tools, and more tools available.

1. Open image in editing software.
2. Inspect the image at 100% for any flaws. This image has potential some due to the movement of the water - they can sometimes be "fixed" by using the clone stamp to hide the seam.
3. Crop and rotate image
4. If you're planning to do any manipulation such as cloning or levels adjustments, do this now - for this image I've adjusted the brightness slightly and cloned out some imperfections from the moving water.
5. If necessary, re-size the image. In this case the full size un-cropped version is about 30 megapixels - I've reduced the image to web-size. Note when downsizing images, noise will appear less visible and the image will appear sharper overall!
6. Save as a Jpg and upload for all the word to see, or print!