panoramic photographs
- Watch white balance
The White Balance feature in your digital camera doesn’t assess the amount of light entering the
camera, but instead it looks at the color of the light. It does this in order to automatically rid your
images of color casts that result from mixed light sources. Leaving this feature set to ‘auto’ can
mean drastic color shifts from one frame to the next as the camera attempts to produce the most
neutral result. Switching to a manual setting will produce images that are more consistent but you
must assess the scene carefully to ensure that you base your white balance settings on the most
prominent light source in the environment.
For instance if you are photographing an indoors scene that combines both daylight through a
window and domestic lights hanging from the ceiling then the Auto White Balance feature will alter
the color of the captured images throughout the sequence to account for one source of the other.
Switching to manual will allow you to set the balance to match either of the two light sources or
even a combination of both using the preset feature. - Control the contrast
Most intermediate to high-end digital cameras
contain a series of settings that control how
the range of brightness in a scene is recorded
to memory. This contrast control feature is
one that you should become familiar with if
you plan to shoot panoramas where the scene
captured moves between bright sunlight and
deep shadows. When faced with such a task
the difference in brightness between the lightest
and darkest areas of the scene can be extremely
wide. With the camera set to ‘normal’ contrast the
sensor can loose detail in both the highlight and
shadow areas of the scene. Delicate details will
either be converted to white or black. Changing
the setting to ‘less contrast’ will increase your
camera’s ability to capture the extremes of the
scene and preserve, otherwise lost, light and
dark, details.
In the opposite scenario, sometimes your subject will not contain enough difference between
shadows and highlights. This situation results in a low contrast or ‘fl at’ image. Typically pictures
made on an overcast winter’s day will fall into this category. Altering the camera’s setting to ‘more
contrast’ will spread the tonal values of the scene over the whole range of the sensor so that the
resultant picture will contain acceptable contrast.
‘How do I know that my scene either has too much or too little contrast?’ The beauty of shooting
digitally is that we can preview our image immediately. There is no waiting around for processing
- the results are available straight away. If you are in a situation where you feel that the source
images may be enhanced by altering the contrast, shoot a couple of test pictures and assess the
results. Check in particular the shadow and highlight areas. Any noticeable loss of detail in either
of these two places will warrant a contrast change and a reshoot.
Most digital cameras provide some control over how
a scene’s contrast is recorded by the sensor. Selecting
the ‘More Contrast’ setting will increase the contrast in
the recorded image. The ‘Normal’ setting uses a fi xed
contrast setting for all images despite the brightness
range of the subject. The ‘Less Contrast’ mode is
used to reduce the contrast of the recorded image.
Panoramic shooters should avoid using the ‘auto’
option as switching to this mode will cause the camera
to adjust the setting to suit each individual shoot.