Exposing photos for panoramas

Because of their look-around nature panoramas can include diverse lighting conditions within a single panorama. The panorama on the right is an example with the building in the centre in full sunshine and the rest of the scene in the shade.

With the camera set to automatic exposure you may find that the camera chooses dramatically different exposure setting for adjacent photographs thus making the overlapping part look quite different in the respective photographs. D Joiner can compensate for this to some extent by blending over the overlap area but it is better to avoid large exposure differences between adjacent photos if possible.

If your camera has manual exposure controls you can photograph many panoramic scenes by choosing one compromise exposure setting and fixing that for all photos in the panorama.

Manually varying exposure

If the range of lighting conditions within the panorama is too large for a single exposure setting you can also manually adjust the exposure between photos. The best way to do this is to make sure that the exposure doesn't change too drastically between adjacent photos.

For instance, with the camera aperture fixed exposure will be regulated by the shutter speed. When moving from one photo to the next make sure that the shutter speed does not vary by more than one stop.

For example if the last photo was shot with a shutter speed of 1/30 sec then ensure that the next photo is shot with a shutter speed of no less than 1/15 sec and no more than 1/60 sec.

In this way exposure can vary across the panorama without introducing any great jumps in exposure between adjacent photographs. The exposure differences caused by gradually changing the exposure from photo to photo can be compensated for by D Joiner's blending capability.