Panorama-rama

My first attempt at composing a panorama was a bit of a bust. Through a suggestion from one of my Flickr contacts I saw that using your camera's burst mode while sweeping across a subject or landscape was an easier way of taking handheld panoramas. I tried this method and it worked out pretty well. Using my 15mm body cap lens, I stood dead center behind the Viking I's bridge and swept across in a left to right fluid movement while holding down my shutter button at 3fps. I used the 15mm BCL so that I wouldn't have to worry about mess ups in auto focus and because it is my widest lens at the moment and I was only about 3-4 meters away from the staircase shown in this photo. The result was about 9 photos (portrait frames) which I then stitched together using Photoshop's "photomerge" function. I like the fish-eye effect this ended up with and the overcast sky turned out nice once I converted to back and white. 

Command center, 15mm, f/8, 1/640, iso 2000

What I do not like is that the top of the ship where all the electronics are is cut off. Because of the layout of the ship this is as far back as I could get without my view being obstructed. I wish I had a lens that was a bit wider, but even a 12mm is only mildly wide (24mm) on a micro four-thirds camera and I dont think that would have made much of a difference. Today I am going to do this at the front of the ship where I will have more space to step back. Hopefully I will be able to get all those cut off interesting bits in the frame. Although  I still have to work on the burst pulse method for taking panoramas it was infinitely better than the ---shoot, move your camera, recompose, shoot--- method and the outcome of this photo makes me want to keep trying it. Thanks for reading!

-Sam D.