74 Digital SLR Photography July 2019
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Panoramas Sometimes there’s just too much of a good thing to
fit into a single frame and that’s where panoramas come in handy.
Don’t be tempted to photograph each frame with a wide-angle
lens to avoid distortions and to maximise foreground interest; instead,
stand back and use any focal length longer than 24mm to isolate the
frames – a 50mm is ideal. Attach your camera to a tripod with a pano
head and take each frame, in portrait or landscape orientation,
overlapping them by at least one-third, before stitching them together
in Photoshop. While you can use Neutral Density grads or Neutral
Density filters, stay away from a polariser as the polarisation effect may
vary between frames and cause the sky to look uneven. Shoot every
frame in manual mode, but first take an exposure reading from the
scene’s midtone, to ensure the exposures are as consistent as possible
when the camera’s position to the light changes. Although you’ll
probably shoot in Raw, select your White Balance in camera rather than
leaving it to Auto to avoid subtle changes.1
View p oi nt s Rather than shooting subjects at your default eye-level,
your images will have a much bigger impact if you get low to the
foreground, or from a high viewpoint to capture rolling fields of flowers
to fit in the frame. Another effective but more obscure perspective is from
underneath a cluster a flowers or trees using the sky as your background.
These oxy daisies were photographed using a 15mm fish-eye lens but you
can get similar results using an ultra wide-angle lens so long as the flowers
are tall enough – the technique works well with daisies and poppies, in
particular, as their petals are translucent and this helps avoid the underside
of the flowers from being underexposed. Place the camera pointing
towards the sky, resting on a beanbag for stability and protection, and fire
the shutter using a remote release. You’ll need to use manual exposure
mode or apply positive exposure compensation as you’ll be shooting into
the sun; don’t use a polarising filter as light is likely to reflect back into the
lens off the filter and make the sky look uneven when the sun is in the
frame. Different lenses handle starbursts better than others – Canon lenses
are known for producing defined, even starbursts, for instance its EF 35mm
f/1.4 offers a six-point burst. I set f/16 to give me enough depth-of-field, but
a starburst effect can often kick in around f/13 when the sun hits an object
like a cliff or, in this case, the flowers.