LX100 Sweep Panorama

Hand held, camera in portrait orientation. I locked in exposure and focus in the middle of the scene than repositioned the camera to start the sweep. This one turned out reasonably well but there are two vertical bands of softness above the left and right ends of the wire cage.

Like many new cameras the LX100 has a sweep Panorama function. This relies on the  high level of fast computing power built into the operating system of a modern camera.

The camera makes about 80 exposures as the user swings the camera around slowly then in less than 1 second stitches them together into a single panoramic JPG image.

The camera can make a horizontal panorama with the camera held in landscape or portrait orientation or a vertical panorama with the camera held in landscape or portrait orientation.

With practice, good technique and optimal conditions, very good results are possible.  I should also say that  disappointing results are easily achieved  with inadequate preparation, suboptimal technique or poor subject selection.  Having said that I still find it remarkable just how much the process will tolerate less than optimal technique and still deliver a worthwhile result.

This one turned out well. I stood on a table to keep the camera as level as possible.

Setting up 

* Set Quality to JPG Fine.  JPG+RAW will not work.

* In the Rec Menu, Page 4/7, set the Panorama Direction. You get 4 choices, in each of which the camera can be held in landscape or portrait orientation.

The top tab is left>right horizontal sweep, landscape orientation, or vertical sweep which can be low>high or  high>low depending on which way you hold the camera in portrait orientation.

The next tab down is right>left horizontal sweep or vertical sweep as above.

Third down is low>high sweep with the camera in landscape orientation or right>left sweep with the camera in portrait orientation, handle side up.

At the bottom is high>low sweep with the camera in landscape orientation or left>right sweep with the camera in portrait orientation, handle side up.

When in doubt play around with the options and sweep in the direction of the on screen arrows.

* Focus Mode AFS.

* Autofocus Mode 1 Area

* Drive Mode Panorama Shot.

* AF Box size 4/15.  There are 15 sizes from which to select. Any will work but 4^th up from the smallest seems to be a good working size for many subjects.

If an option is greyed out this means there is an incompatible setting somewhere in the menu system. You might have to go on a fishing expedition to find it.

When Panorama Shot is set some settings are automatically disabled. For instance, stabiliser is switched off, AFF and AFC are disabled and several screen displays such as the level gauge and grid lines are disabled.

A difficult shot. There are numerous soft jaggies on the horizontal lines, subject brightness range is beyond the JPG dynamic range and nothing is really sharp due to the wide aperture and slow shutter speed. I used a tripod for this which helped to keep verticals in line.

User adjustments enabled   With Panorama Shot you can adjust Exposure Compensation [+/-], ISO and Manual/Auto focus.

User adjustments disabled   You cannot change the lens focal length, it is set at E24mm. Aspect Ratio is fixed regardless of the position of the slider on the lens barrel.  Aperture and shutter speed are set by the camera regardless of the positions of the aperture ring and shutter speed dial.

Subject selection 

* Outdoors is easier. Indoors the camera will likely select f1.7 which restricts depth of focus, together with a slowish shutter speed which adversely affects sharpness as you are deliberately moving the camera.

* Try to avoid prominent subject elements close to the camera. Apart from depth of focus issues this can cause a problem specific to multi shot stitched panoramas.

Ideally the camera should be rotated around the “no parallax point” of the lens. This does not happen with the usual technique for making sweep panoramas. The result is that each successive shot of the sequence places near and far objects in a different lateral relationship to each other due to the parallax effect.  The camera’s computer might not be able to fully correct for this leading to stitching errors.

How close is “too close” ?  I think this depends on many factors so trials are indicated.

* Architectural subjects with straight horizontal lines are prone to stitching discontinuities as they tend to be rendered as curves in the panorama.

* Moving objects such as people and cars create amusing effects in the final result as they part company with the space/time continuum.  Generally though moving subject elements are to be avoided.

* A reasonably evenly lit subject is desirable. The camera will use the same exposure for every frame in the sequence.

I included this to illustrate how the panorama scanning process deals with moving subjects. The lady crossing the road has been rendered as a clear singularity although she would have appeared in about 10 frames. Somehow the software has figured out an optimal rendition. The green car was not so lucky.

Technique

* Decide whether you intend to hold the camera in landscape or portrait orientation.

* Focus manually if you decide on that option.

* Decide which part of the subject you think will make the best area on which to base the exposure. Point the camera in this direction, half press and hold  the shutter button to lock in the exposure (or use the AF/AEL button for this) then point the camera to where you want to start the panorama sweep.

* Hold the camera so it is vertical as you look at it, not tilted left or right. View with the monitor or the viewfinder. The camera can be pointed up or down somewhat and you can still get a good result. You will have to experiment to test just how far up or down the stitching software will tolerate.

* Fully depress the shutter button (a short press will do).

* Rotate the camera by swinging your whole body around. Try to swing smoothly without otherwise altering camera orientation.

* Experiment with the speed of rotation.

* Apply exposure compensation if  required.

* Expect to need several trials for most attempted panoramas.