Originally posted by swanlefitte Handheld I have never had success at panorama shots unless the subject is at infinity. They take so long to process I really don't want to practice if I will only get 10% to work.
I find in general at infinity the arc of the camera is small, about 10 degrees but at close range it needs to sweep around 30 degrees.
Anyway I would like to know things like up to 15 degrees gets good results 70% but by 20 degrees it drops to 30% . Does a more out of focus background make it harder to stitch? Would my success go down as I open the lens up?
Honestly it sounds as if you're over thinking things. I guarantee all brenizer method shots are done handheld, it would just take too long with a tripod + the scenario given (wedding, bride and groom shot etc, no time for tripods etc), the
practice and
technique in deciding how to pan around for the shot is actually instrumental in how many of your attempts become keepers vs scrapyard. My earlier attempts were very scrappy too. Don't give up, yes some are very good at it off the bat, that doesn't mean you can't also master the technique.
Tripodding in general is something I typically do more for long exposure and pixelshift than panoramas these days. I dunno... it just feels as though computing and software power in stitching handheld shots has come a long way since the days of using the pan function of a tripod. I've stitched many landscape shot panorama from standing and just giving a good decent amount of overlap (focus to infinity as you say).
Brenizer is of course typically not focusing to infinity. It's a 'Bokeh Panorama', it's really not much different to normal landscape panoramas except that you want to ensure the focus is correct on the subject and add frames vertically as well as horizontally.
Here's a few things to consider;
1) Let us know your camera lens and system, we can advise if that might work or not. Essentially you can do it with a lot of lenses but some combos might be harder than others.
2) Let us know your camera settings, or follow Rods advice and use Manual, or create a User Mode with my suggested settings before, paying attention to such things as locking exposure, back button focusing and getting off Auto White Balance etc
3) I typically take the subject matter as my first shot, but you needn't have to. What you can't really do (or I don't advise) is to take the shot, chimp to see if it's in focus, see that it is, and then go back to getting the extra frames. You will simply have moved the camera too much from the first shot to 'putting it back' exactly where it was to really succeed with the rest of the frames and stitch. You do have to have a degree of trust that you nailed focus. I have done many a brenizer and thought "Cool!" went to review the first and most critical shot (of the person or subject) and realised it suffered a little in back focus or whatever and the focus wasn't really that sharp and therefore the shot is ruined, delete 20 odd shots and try again.
4) I have shot brenizers with Live View and things like Face Detection before, but it is a slower process, really using the OVF is best I think, you can fire off and pan the camera around more gently and subtler this way. Typically I only use Face Detection focus and Live View if doing a very small 4-5 Brenizer, otherwise OVF is better.
5) Try and pan the camera around gently, twist at your torso a little to help with the shots.
6) What I started off doing is just practice a single row. This meant I turned my camera into portrait mode and snapped perhaps 1 in the middle for focus, and then added frames on the side with plenty of overlap. This was 6-7 shots in portrait mode, one of my earlier first attempts, and we can see it's not perfect;
My composition is off, I really needed more grass below her feet, and if we inspect the grass to the left of her it was starting to do that weird thing where it creates sharp peaks. Essentially this is just overlapping issues and with more practice this kinda affect is less seen.
7) What software are you using for the stitch? As I mentioned earlier I can get quite very different results from using different programs. I like ICE but have had it complete screw up a straight edge like a railing or something where as Photoshop takes longer to process the shot but handles the task better (in my experience). It could be that you are being disheartened with your attempts and your technique is fine, you just need to find a capable program that can stitch your work together.