Panoramic Photos of Downtown San Diego are extremely popular. Photographers usually find themselves in Coronado looking across the bay and feel the need to capture the beautiful skyline of Downtown San Diego. If you google “Downtown San Diego Panoramic” you will come across several different shots; some during the morning, mid day, and dusk/night time like the one I have taken below. For the inexperienced photographer taking a shot like this seems near impossible. I am here to tell you that it is fairly easy.
Here are the specs from the exposure:
Shutter speed = 30 seconds
Aperture = f/8.0
ISO = 200
So how would you take a shot like this?
Practice. Go out one day around 7pm and set various different exposures. To give you some guidance in setting the appropriate exposure use the following:
I. When setting the shutter speed you want a long exposure of 10 seconds or longer. The reason for this is because of the following:
1. You will need the shutter open for a long time to get in enough light.
2. It smooth over the water and reflections giving it that really cool effect in the bottom 2/3rds of the shot.
*Make sure you have a sturdy tripod before performing this shot.
II. Have a relatively smaller aperture. Somewhere between f/8.0 and f/16.0. The reason for such a small aperture is so you can capture sharp details in the background. With all of the different depths from the building it is essential to have a small aperture.
III. When shooting a panoramic it is imperative to overlay a lot of your shots. Do NOT try to measure the frames from start to beginning for each of the shots. Give yourself plenty of “wiggle room.” You can see from the 3 original shots I overlapped the images by a significant amount. This will make your life a lot easier when editing it in photoshop.
There are about a 1000 different tips that can go into making awesome panoramic photographs. If you like the panoramic of Downtown San Diego and would like to know how I did it in further detail then leave me a comment and I will get back to you.
