Project 27: A 360° Panorama

As this is the first OCA course I have undertaken, I did not have the benefit of having studied panoramas at Level 1. Therefore, this was a bit of a steep learning curve for me. However, I relish a challenge and I don't think I've done too badly.

I chose Cardiff as my location. This was partly because I knew I would have the opportunity to photograph there, and partly because I felt that the Millenium Stadium and River Taff would make an interesting location for a panorama. I passed through Cardiff on my way to work in Swansea, and had a little less than an hour between train changes to shoot this. Armed with tripod, camera and a week's worth of luggage in a heavy suitcase, I set off from the station. Luckily it's only a short walk to the river from there - and thank you so much to the genius who thought of putting wheels on suitcases!

I got a few funny looks as I set up my tripod - it was dark and spitting with rain, and I can well understand that many people thought this was an odd time to be taking photographs! I ensured the tripod head was as level as possible, and then began to shoot. In total, I shot 21 images in landscape format - a deliberate choice, as I felt this would give me the most flexibility in terms of overlap. Here are the thumbnails for the files (converted into jpegs from the Raw files):

As it was dark, each image was a fairly long exposure, and the light changed before I had made it right the way around. I kept the settings the same for each image, as I felt this would help at the blending stage.

In my hotel room in Swansea, I transferred the photographs to the computer, and loaded them into Photoshop. I then set about ensuring as good a match as possible between the colours, tones and brightness of each image. Then came a bit of trial and error for me, as I was pretty new at this process! I used the 'auto align' images command to overlap each layer. In all cases except one, I had left enough overlap for the software to take care of it. I manually aligned the other myself.

Ater flattening the image, I worked at the 200% zoom level to ensure that the blending was as seamless as possible. I then cropped the image to get rid of the rough edges. There - done! Or so I thought... it hadn't occured to me that I should ensure the two ends of the panorama match each other completely. Thank goodness for the 'undo' tool.

Actually, though, it was not too difficult to line up the ends. The fact that I had kept the tripod very level helped me here, I think. After a little more blending, it was ready to upload.



A Google search turned up the site Panoye. This site's ultimate aim is to"build a virtual tour all around the Earth'. There are already an impressive number of high quality panoramas on there. Here is my effort:




I can see a few minor imperfections there (I'll leave you to find them yourselves ;) ) but on the whole, as my first effort at a 360° panorama, I'm pretty pleased with it.