Going to try shooting my first pano this weekend. I’ve got a feeling I know the answer to this but thought I’d ask anyway…

When shooting a pano – what are the recommendations for image resolution and format? Noticed that the Stitcher app doesn’t support Camera RAW files, so JPEG or TIFF at the max resolution of the camera?

To make the most of the zoomability, which is GigaPan’s killer feature, you generally want to shoot as large an image as you can shoot sharply. I have always shot maximum resolution JPG files for my GigaPans.

I really would like to go with RAW files and use Lightroom to batch convert them to lossless TIFF before stitching. Not sure how practical that is, but it sure would be nice.

I don’t think that should be a problem, and if you want to use another software it should then be fine to use the camera raw.

hey david, i am doing all my pictures in raw first, then go into nikon nx (if i would have lightroom i would use this) make the corrections (if there are any ;-) ) and export the pics as tiff and stitch the gigapan ….works better than jpg and gets sharper images markus

The amazing amount of resolution offered by the D800 has a significant downside.

If you don’t shoot in RAW you may get stuck with a bad white balance that could have been easily corrected.

Hey Shawn:
A D800 owner walks into a bar and sits next to a gigapanner. The gigapanner looks bummed out, so the D800 owner says, “Hey, why the long face?” The gigapanner looks up and says, “I just shot this huge panorama, it’s almost 100 megapixels! But the stitcher isn’t working, I think one of my images is missing.” The D800 owner thought about this a moment and then asked, “Is it the left one or the right one?”

Shawn, what go you mean about D800’s resolution downside?