- Something I find very important
for panoramic photography
is one of these.
This is my old standby wired remote
to remotely trigger the camera.
Now, this is a about $130 remote,
but you can get any cheap remote that fires
the shutter on the camera.
Reducing camera shake is important,
as always, in photography,
but more important in panoramic photography
because we're overlapping so many images
that I really want to avoid those mistakes.
- Now, the generic ones work perfectly fine.
The key thing here is make sure
that you have backup batteries
if it takes a battery.
Because those batteries go dead.
Yeah, no batteries, no juice.
It's not gonna work.
That one runs off of AAAs.
- One of the beautiful things, Rich,
about this remote?
For the shutter release, doesn't need batteries.
- True, all right.
- It's one of my favorite things about it.
- Make sure, though, if you're gonna
be using it for time lapse or other advanced features
you have that.
I've hooked one up here to the Olympus,
and, quite simply, as we rotate that, take a shot.
So it's pretty simple
to just tilt and just move around there
as we're panning,
and we can fire the shots.
That's very simple because now I don't have
to push the camera here.
I'm not providing any sort of pressure
that might shake the camera or bump something.
I could provide minimal force for that rotation
for the pan and quickly fire the shots.
But this is just the entry level, right?
I've seen you shoot off of a pole camera before,
where the camera is 12, 14 feet in the air, Ron.
This isn't gonna reach 14 feet.
- Right. Now, while I do have an extension for this one
that would if I wanted to,
it's usually not the best because it gets in the way.
The old tried-and-true Pocket Wizards
are a fantastic remote trigger.
These are very simple,
where all it does is trigger the device.
If I have set my exposures already,
move the camera up the pole,
and I can use this to fire it.
- The advantage here is that many of you,
particularly if you do studio type lighting,
may already have Pocket Wizards.
This is a standard in many photographers' kit
used to remotely fire things like strobe lights
or flashes, and it's just gonna give you
a great, flexible solution,
which will work for remotely triggering the camera.
Now, you also have another solution here
that's a bit fancier, that actually gives you
sort of a dedicated computer, right?
- As usual, while we're talking about this,
we move into those
dedicated panoramic photographer equipment items,
and this is one of them.
It's called the Promote Control.
It lets you open up the capabilities
of your camera, mostly talking
about the bracketing of the cameras,
where most cameras these days still allow three shots
for bracketing, which is rarely enough, frankly.
Other cameras, like mine, only allow me to shoot
at one stop increments, although I can take more.
I can take nine.
Sometimes also not enough.
Also, if I'm on a bigger job
where I'm taking many, many, many photos,
I can use this and I can set it so I'm taking only
the needed brackets, no more, no less.
This allows me to do so.
It requires that I hook it up via USB,
as well as the remote trigger connection
on the camera.
There's a little bit more setup,
but then I can choose exactly how many shots I want
at exactly how much EV spacing.
It's also good for other uses like time lapse, as well.
- Similar to that is the Trigger Trap solution,
which we've explored on shows like
"DSLR Video Tips", "Video Gear Weekly",
and some of our time lapse courses,
but it, too, works with HDR.
We're gonna show you in the field
why shooting HDR is often essential
with 360-degree photography.
It's because you want to capture
not just the entire view, but the entire dynamic range.
While there are lots of solutions out there,
another one that I'm a big fan of, Ron,
is the one from CamRanger, which actually allows you
if you're using Canon or Nikon gear,
to essentially tether this to the camera,
create a dedicated Wi-Fi network
and then, using something like your iPad,
not only can you adjust the camera settings,
but it will live stream and download the photos
to your device.
If the camera is in a difficult place that's hard to reach,
well, you can actually get shots this way.
They even have a remote control head
that you could use to pan and tilt the camera
if you needed to install it, maybe, say,
on top of a building.
Gives you a lot of flexibility.
My takeaway here is always have a dedicated release remote
in your bag.
Preferably something that's a cabled remote
so you know that if it's plugged in
it's gonna work.
If possible, toss in a couple extra batteries
so that if you're doing things like more advanced controls
or time lapse shooting it will still get the job done.
If your camera offers a wireless remote,
such as a Wi-Fi app, get that.
That could be quite useful as well, and is often free
because the camera manufacturer makes that available
for things like the iOS or Android platform.
If you need to step up, consider investing in something
like the solutions that we've talked about here
that are more dedicated that are gonna give you those types
of remote control, and that could really unlock
better control over things like bracketing
and the confidence that the shots will always fire.
Ron, how often do you shoot with a remote control?
- Anytime I'm shooting panoramas,
unless something happens where I've forgotten it.
Then, in that case, I might use the timer
to do two second delay,
but when we're talking about panoramic photography, always.
- Yeah, and that's actually a good tip.
If you find yourself with dead batteries,
for example, I was out shooting recently
at the Capital Mall by the Lincoln Memorial,
and, somehow, in the hustle and bustle of moving around,
I lost my remote.
Because I was shooting and night,
and I didn't want any camera shake,
I just turned on the two second delay timer
so when I pushed the shutter button,
the camera would wait two seconds
before taking the shot,
which gave it the ability to actually stabilize.
Remember, all this is really about is getting
your hands off the camera
to cut down on any unnecessary shake,
which can soften the photo, or actually bump the camera
out of position while you're shooting.