Against conventional advice.

[leuallen]

The usual advice when shooting panos is to use manual exposure to lock down the exposure and make it consistent across all frames. I shot this yesterday. It is very high contrast with the sun very low as you can see by the long shadows from the trees right. When I used manual exposure, exposure based on left frame, the results came out badly. The right frame was badly underexposed. In desperation I decided to do one last set of exposures, this time using aperture priority - let the camera do its thing. The histograms for each exposure looked very consistent, better than the manual exposures.

But the question was how would CS5 handle the exposure differences. Not badly. The sky was fairly consistent across the frames but much too light. Masked for the sky and darkened and much other post work, came up with this.

In the future I will not be so rigid and willing to try things which are 'not supposed to work'.

Larry

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

That's how I've been doing panoramas all along (on auto exposure, that is). Another myth is you can not use a polarizer... yes, we can! Photoshop as of CS4 (I believe) is just so much better at blending in both cases. I do it with a twist, though: I bracket every exposure. That way I can choose the most compatible ones before transferring to PS for blending.

[leuallen]

Slobodan,

I used a polarizer for this image also, although it did not do much - unremoved reminent of a previous shot.

I think I will try bracketing but it seems a lot of trouble. Lots of images to straighten out. I hate choices.

Very nice picture. Unfortunately I don't have access to any nice scenery. That field is about as good as it gets around here -central Illinois farm country.

Larry

[Peter McLennan]

In the future I will not be so rigid and willing to try things which are 'not supposed to work'.
Larry

Exactly.  When in doubt, do your own tests.  I've successfully shot panos on aperture priority for years.

[walter.sk]

Here's another bombshell:  I now use autofocus on each frame in a pano, where I used to focus manually about 1/3 of the way into the midframe of the pano.  I also used to use a fixed exposure, usually the average between highlights and shadows while making sure not to blow the highlights.  I still used a fixed white balance, though.

The blending power of automerge in CS5 is so good that I get better results exposing for each frame.  Similarly, I get sharper detail focusing about 1/3 of the way in on each frame than using a fixed focus when shooting nature or city landscapes, and especially when shooting vertical panos that go from traffic at street level to the top of a skyscraper in the clouds.

Again, I recommend trying it before dismissing the technique.

[AndrewKulin]

This will seem a dopey question, but it is one I have never quite understood what it means.  Where exactly is 1/3 of the way into the frame?  This is something I have not been able to figure out, so using the first photo as an example:

• Is 1/3 of the way into the frame truly 1/3 - which in the 1st photo is roughly the point where the field and the forest meet;
  or,
  
• Is it about 1/3 of the distance you want in focus, which in the 1st photo I would estimate is in the field at a bout a point where the longest shadow crosses the field (most of the frame

[walter.sk]

• Is 1/3 of the way into the frame truly 1/3 - which in the 1st photo is roughly the point where the field and the forest meet;
  or,
  
• Is it about 1/3 of the distance you want in focus, which in the 1st photo I would estimate is in the field at a bout a point where the longest shadow crosses the field (most of the frame

When using a fixed focus for the pano, I point the camera at what will be the middle frame of the pano. (I have already set the focal length so as to frame what I want included of the foreground and background across all frames of the pano.)  Looking at the scene within the viewfinder, I set the focus point about 1/3 of the way into the actually framed scene.

When using autofocus, I do the same with each separate frame.  With landscapes, cityscapes and vertical panos,  I also use between f/11 and f/16, depending on the lens' characteristics.