360° panorama from Thomas Hill Standpipe
This 360° panorama from the roof of the Thomas Hill Standpipe in Bangor, Maine was a very challenging image to create. Not only was the sun popping in and out of clouds making a consistent exposure difficult throughout the image, but with a flag pole and antennas scattered about the middle of the roof there is no single unobstructed position to shoot from. I knew that at 24mm in portrait orientation I could rotate every 30° on my panning head and get a sufficient overlap (43%) for panoramas, so I divided the circumference of the tower into 12 positions and took twelve smaller panoramas by shooting 3 directions (every 30°) at each position along the balustrade, hoping the edges of each of the twelve “mini” panoramas would line up with each other to stitch all the smaller panoramas into one large seamless panorama later. Each bracket consisted of 7 exposures to cover the entire dynamic range. I only shot a single row to see if it was even possible to stitch such a complicated 360° image from so many different camera locations. The final image is a little over 92 megapixels and 85” x 19”.
Shooting data: 24mm, f/8, ISO 400, and 7 exposures bracketed 1.3EV apart covering 1/8000 to 1/30 shutter speeds.
Equipment used: Nikon D700, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8, Promote Control, and Really Right Stuff pano/gimbal head & BH-40 ballhead.