Panoramas with the Fuji x100

Over the last 3 months I've been shooting panoramas with the x100 and have just been to Scotland where I went as far as to shoot most of my photos in pano mode.

The panorama feature of the x100 is often overlooked as a gimmick but I would say that it is a fantastic feature which can easily be used in certain situations.   All of the panoramas I shot in this post and of Scotland are unedited and uncropped.

The camera allows you to shoot a panorama by rotating the camera around a predefined angle.   The camera grabs slices of the view and stitches them together into one image.   It also works out the distortion and instantly shows you a finished panorama!   I always shoot handheld and with a bit of practice you can produce seamless panoramas in seconds.

Problems 

Now obviously with this method there are a few problems.   First, if there is any moving objects in the scene, the camera can slice these up, make objects partly disappear or show multiple versions of the object.   Secondly since you are moving the camera, any significantly wrong movements can introduce errors in the image, where the image slices.   With a bit of practice you can reduce errors in both situations and produce quality results.

Advantages

So, many people may ask, why shoot a panorama in this way when you could shoot the old way of taking multiple photos and stitch them together in photoshop?   There are a few advantages.  
First is immediacy.   Straight away you will know if your shot is working or not, you can adjust your positions and reshoot.   
Secondly, you start to learn the 120 degree frame and you will get better at shooting panos.   Due to repeated practice at shooting panos, you can start seeing the frame and learn to compose your shots faster and will also learn how the shot will distort in the frame.   Because it produces faster output and feedback you can also get better at panoramas faster.
Third, you don't need to stitch in photoshop.   Now, the tools to stitch are quite easy nowadays.   You can just point photoshop and a bunch of photos and they will stitch together well.   But this still takes a lot of time if you want to shoot a lot of panoramas.   If you have shot hundreds of panoramas over the course of a holiday, it will take ages to stitch them together.   In the past, I've wasted time stitching badly composed shots together.   If you wanted to stitch in Photoshop you could actually use the pano mode to plan and set your composition, then take your shots to stitch together once you are happy. 
Finally, you can play with panoramas!   I've shot quite a few panoramas in places that I don't know if a pano will work.   You can use the function in many situations that you never considered doing a pano shot, and if it doesn't work, no problem, you've wasted no time!

Settings

When shooting in panoramic mode, first find a view that you think will work as a pano.   By putting the camera to your eye and rotating around a point, you can start planning out the panorama and choosing focal points etc.   By using the same angle range for the pano, you can soon start to compose before you press the button by imagining the frame size in your head.
I set all of my panos to the same angle of 120 degrees.   This gives a viewable frame that works as a photo.    I think that 180 degrees is simply too long and thin to be useable.      It is also very hard to control subject matter in such a long, thin panorama.
Next, depending on the subject, I choose either a vertical or horizontal format for the image.   You need to make the call if the scene in front of you will work better horizontal or vertical.   If shooting vertical you often need to have interesting stuff in the frame from above the horizon to directly in front of your feet, for the shot to work.   Also, you can sometimes end up shooting your own feet, so you might want to put on your best shoes!
The next decision is what direction to shoot the pano in.   By default the camera is set up to shoot left to right, but in some cases you will want to change this.   I want to have strong framing in the panorama in at least one side, whereas the other side can run longer.   So, I would choose to start the frame from the side with the strongest feature then run long on the other side.    Another situation is if you want to position a key feature at a specific position in the frame.   By keeping the position of the feature closer to the side you start from, you have more chance of positioning the feature where you want.

Exposure and Focus

So, now you are about ready to shoot.   The next decision is your focus and exposure.  
Due to the nature of panoramas, you will probably want to focus to infinity but that is not necessarily the case.   You can lock the focus on an part of the scene with a half press then move to the start of the pano that you are shooting.   I like to set focus lock up on the AF-L button so I can control focus separately to exposure.
The other consideration which I've found much more important is getting the exposure right.   Due to the fact that the panorama will be stored as a jpg, you will not have the convenience of a RAW files dynamic range, so you really need to get it right in-camera.   Since the panorama mode automatically changes to EVF mode, you can pretty much see your exposure in the viewfinder.   In bright light, I often cover the viewfinder and around my eye with my left hand to block out external light, and make sure that the exposure is correct.   Since the exposure is going to be the same throughout the whole panorama, you really need to decide on what you want to show in the shot and I normally set the exposure on the main point of focus in the shot I'm taking.   Just point to the camera at whatever part of the panorama you want to set the exposure for, change the exposure compensation to really nail it, then half press the shutter.   This will lock the exposure and you can then return the camera to the start of the panorama that you want to shoot.

Stance

So, poised and ready with the camera set up, you now want to ready yourself for shooting the pano.   As I said previously, I never use a tripod, so this adds a few complications.   I have found, to shoot handheld, its best to follow a set of practices.   First, get your feet together on a relatively flat piece of ground.   Putting your feet together allows you to turn your body through the whole panorama easier and being on flat ground stops you falling over!    
I then find a point roughly in the middle of the panorama and I point my feet towards that point.   This is key to creating a level pano.   If your stance is pointing at the start of the panorama, by the end your body will be twisted up and your horizon line will be lost, causing the photo to break into slices.
So, point your feet at the middle of the shot, turn your body to the start of the panorama and push in the shutter. 

Shooting

The panorama will then start taking.   Now, at this point you need to turn the camera steadily and keep the horizon in the same position throughout the shot.   One problem with doing this is the yellow horizon line and the cross that tracks your offset from the horizon.   I have found that this feature is best ignored.   There is about a second delay in the crosses position which means that any shift you compensate for will be probably inaccurate, making you overshoot the compensation.   So, if you see it diverging from the line, its best to just ignore it and concentrate on keeping the camera at what you think is the best horizon position.   If you do start trying to compensate for the cross, I've found that my panorama gets increasingly erratic.
When shooting the 120 degree panorama, you will actually need to pan through a much larger range to about 180 degrees.   This is a bit frustrating since once you can visualise the frame, you will realise when your shot is complete but the camera will keep shooting.   But it is best to keep going or the camera can stop shooting the pano.
Too slow or fast and the camera will stop, so just try to keep a steady pace throughout the entire shot.

If you are brave enough to shoot a pano with moving things in your scene, good luck!   The only way I've found of mitigating problems in this situation is to move the camera as fast as possible so that the slices the camera takes are much bigger.   If you are shooting moving objects, its best if they are in the distance.   Also, you can get away with shooting moving objects more in a vertical pano, since most of the frame will be mainly ground or sky.   If you are shooting people you can obviously ask them to stay still through the course of the panorama.   Just be wary of strained smiles throughout the shot!

Checking

So, at this point, you should have an amazing pano shot, with very little breakup and and awesome composition!   But how do you know?   Maybe there is a tiny break in the middle of the shot that would take ages in post to fix.   So, when in playback mode and viewing your pano. you can press down on the control pad and the pano will scroll through for you to have a quick check.   This will allow you to see any flaws in the shot and any breaks.    If you need more time, you can push down again to stop the scroll-through and use left and right on the pad to pad back and fore through the shot.   If you need to get really close, you can obviously zoom in in the normal way.

Banding

So, that's about as much as I know, up to now.   I'm still working on figuring out why you sometimes get banding through some panoramas and I'm trying to figure out a way to avoid it as much as possible.    Shooting into the sun is a big cause of this problem.   I've got a feeling that at very high shutter speeds, there is discrepancies in the exposure, so trying to reduce the shutter speed would help.   I've not tried it yet, but in this situation the ND filter should help this.   Another thing that definitely causes some banding is flaring on the lens.   You can mitigate flaring a bit by setting higher apertures.   I'm also considering buying the lens hood for removing the flare banding from shots.

If you have any other tips, tricks or ideas about shooting panoramas, give me a shout because I would love to hear them.   Also, if you find this useful and shoot some nice shots, I would like to see them.   

Have a look at my best Scotland panoramas here

Inspiration

Here are some videos showing the work of a few photographers I've been interested in recently.   I've bought a book by each of these guys which are amazing and a continual source of inspiration.

The first photographer, Alex Webb is a street photographer with a great asthetic.   He gets in so close and manages to create amazing compositions in a split second.   I'm also interested in his use of mirrors in a lot of his pictures.   He uses reflections to create more complex and interesting shots, creating compositions within compositions.   He also uses posts and pillars in the street to divide his photos again and again.   His shots are often underexposed, creating mood and atmosphere, with muted colours.   Creating harmony out of complexity is a real skill.

Website    Book

William Albert Allard is a master of colour.   I love the colour range in his pictures and the quiet feel of many of his shots.   He imbues a level of quiet calm in his photos and manages to convey mood and emotion through many of his shots.   His book is also a fascinating read, covering his life and many adventures in photography.   Reading his thoughts again show a quiet mind and shows where the quiet in his shots come from.

Website    Book

David Alan Harveys work is amazing!   His shots are rich, vibrant and have so much mood.   He creates exceptional and interesting compositions which often break the rules of composition but are composed better than most photographs you see.   He seems to capture the soul of a place and shows the richness of life and the makes you want to catch the next flight out to an exotic location.

Website    Book

These 3 photographers are fantastic examples of what photography can be.   Deep, interesting, rich and with an individual perspective on the world, that comes through in the composition and the colour.

Fuji x100 and a simplified experience

A few months ago I managed to get my hands on one of the few Fuji x100 cameras that were available in Britain.   I was following all of the news on the internet about this camera before it was released and thought that it would suit me down to the ground with the kind of photography I do and the direction my photography was going over the last year.   So, a chance came to get one, as a friend mentioned that the local photography store had one of the cameras.

Buying the camera was the best decision I've made in my photography in quite a while!   Even though there are problems with some of the functionality of the camera, that you can read about all over the internet, at the end of the day this camera has changed how I shoot.   Here is a particularly good write up about the functionality problems, as well as a totally different perspective on using the camera for street photography.

Size

The first aspect is the small size.   Before, I used a D40 DSLR with a 35mm F1.8 and carried an 18-200mm lens in a bag.   With an SLR you have to make the decision to go out photographing.   I used a hip bag with a compartment for the camera, a part for the other lens and a space for other bits and pieces.   I thought that my kit was minimal, but the x100 changes how and when I take the camera.   I bought the x100 leather case, which fits snuggly around the body and the camera, can simply be thrown round my neck, any day with very little hassle.   I also carry a tiny metal tin that has an extra battery and an extra memory card. Amazing!   No more bag swinging around, no extra lenses, just a lightweight compact camera that you can take anywhere easily.   I didn't think that this would make a difference, but it has.

The other contribution of size is that it makes the camera very discreet.   It is also unthreatening, unlike an SLR.   This plays a role in getting better photos since people don't see you taking photos or if they do, they don't mind.   The retro feel also helps to put people at ease. 

Fixed Lens

The second aspect is the fixed lens.   The 23mm lens (35mm equivalent) is just right.   Its not too wide to start creating distortion in any images but wide enough to create depth and to get plenty into a shot.   With the 35mm on my old camera (50mm equivalent), I always wanted to get in extra details around the edge of the frame, but due to the FOV, I sometimes couldn't get the shot I wanted.  
The other part of having a fixed lens is learning the frame.   Even with the 50mm equivalent lens on my old camera, I still chose to put on the 18-200mm in certain situations incase I missed a shot.   This slowed down the process of learning the frame of my previous lens.   With the x100 I am starting to have an idea of the frame in my head, which means I can walk to the shot, then just raise the camera, and take it.   No, wandering around or stepping back until a shot is composed!   I'm starting to see the frame before I lift the camera to my eye.   This makes a massive difference in photography.
The 35mm view has another aspect.   It brings your view around you.   As you walk around with the camera, you forget about the distant shots and find more pictures in the close vicinity around you.   

Picture Quality

Picture quality is very good and am happy with the results that I get.   Normally, if you go for a smaller camera, you automatically sacrifice picture quality.   I've never been a pixel peeper but the photos from the camera seem very sharp and blows my old camera out of the water.

Low Light

Another part of this camera, is low light quality.   I've never been a big fan of using a flash.   In fact I've always set myself up to avoid it at any cost.   I know the advantages it give you, but the type of photography I do doesn't need a flash.   Its also another thing to get in the way of shooting.   Figuring out shutter speed, aperture, focus and whitebalance is enough for me!
The quality of shots I can get from the x100 at night is amazing.   By setting the camera to manual, you can shoot in near dark with no problem.   There is very little noise in the shots and would stand up against most professional SLR's in similar conditions.   So, no tripod needed at night!   Also, the whitebalance at night is very good.   You get a wide range of colour coming through in heavily colourised light conditions.

Mechanical Controls

The mechanical controls are great!   Dialling in aperture and exposure is a breath of fresh air.   After a few months of shooting, I can just feel for where the aperture is at, and I know what its set to.   I assume that I can only get faster in setting these dials and settings, allowing me a more subconcious shooting experience.

Viewfinder

Finally, I would like to mention the viewfinder.   I'm not going to go into how it works since you can read about it all over the place.   I want to talk about what it does for a photographer.
First, the optical viewfinder is amazingly clear, large and nice to use.   It also shows you what is outside the edges of your frame which is actually very handy.   I use this most of the time.
Switch into the electronic viewfinder, you have now direct information of focus, exposure and whitebalance.   Since I've made the rule of no post processing on the computer, getting the right whitebalance in-camera is critical.   I view the whitebalance as a creative tool and never try to match white but try to push the whitebalance to reflect what I see and what mood I want to capture.   So, as I move into new light, I switch to EVF and set the whitebalance and exposure, before switching back to the optical for a better view.
The option to toggle into the LCD screen also allows you to frame shots from awkward angles.   I didn't have a live view on my SLR which I missed since you just revert to holding the camera in the air and clicking, hoping for the best.

So...

These points above may seem trivial or very simplistic ideas in terms of the complexity of modern photography but I've realised that they are probably the most important features for a camera as a tool.   Simplification of the frame, reduction of camera size without loss of quality, great in low light, intuitive mechanical controls and an amazing viewfinder add up to a great package for me.

Don't get me wrong, there is a few things that need to be fixed with this camera but even if they don't fix these problems, the pro's far outweigh the con's.   I would love to see a fix for the intermitent startup which has cost me some shots and the fiddly macro mode controls but I can work around these issues.   At the end of the day, the photos I've been shooting seem markedly better than the previous stuff I've shot.

I've been taking the camera everywhere over the last couple of months and will be posting up more of the photos I've taken soon, but have been posting plenty of shots to flickr already.  

In future blog posts, I want to talk about street photography, techniques for in-camera panoramas and the fact that I've stopped post-processing my photos.

Photography has never been so fun!