EFKhoury ;)

This is a quick guide on best practices for taking photos to later stitch and create a panorama. No matter which software you use to create the panorama, the original images must be well shot. Following these rules will surely give you better results.

Find the right spot
Find a good spot where you can stand and turn with ease, don't corner yourself or stand at the edge of a cliff! Keep distance between the camera and large objects as they might cause undesirable effects.

Don't tilt the camera
Do your best to keep the camera on the same horizontal level. A small variation is inevitable if not using a tripod but shouldn't cause any problems. This is an explanation where the camera was tilted before taking the second shot:

Camera rotation
Rotate the camera around it's initial position, imagine that the camera is pinned to the ground and can only rotate. Again a tripod will take care of this, but if you're not using one, try not to have objects close to the camera since the distortion will be significant on them.

Overlap
Automatic stitchers such as Dermandar's do not use voodoo to find a match between adjacent photos, they assume that an object present at the edge of a photo would have at least a part of it in the edge of the adjacent photo. Check out this example:

In Dermandar's case, 20% to 30% overlap is recommended; more or less than that might cause undesirable problems.

Moving objects
Avoid placing moving objects on the edges of the photo because they might move while you are taking the second shot and you'll end up with inconsistent images, like this one:

Fixed zoom
You must not change the zoom level between photos, things will get messy! Select the correct zoom level from the beginning.

Portrait vs. landscape
Portrait mode is best for horizontal panoramas because the stitched panorama will have its top and bottom cropped, shooting in portrait mode will compensate that and keep more details in the panorama.
The same applies for vertical panoramas, where landscape mode is the preferred one.

White balance
Nowadays most digital cameras have options to apply color correction based on the type of scene illumination; they provide manual, automatic and custom white balance.
It is important to switch off the automatic white balance and set it manually according to your light conditions; do not change it during the shooting otherwise an object's color might change from a photo to another.

Aperture
The aperture is the "hole" from which the light enters to reach the (digital) camera's sensor. If set to automatic, the "hole" will be wider when the light decreases and smaller when there's too much light; like the pupil of the eye.
It is recommended to set the aperture to manual mode.

Advanced users:
Manually change your camera's aperture to f/8 or f/11, because most lenses "do their best" at these settings. Then turn around and watch how the shutter speed changes, take the middle value, change the shutter speed mode to manual and set it to that value.

Auto focus
A camera's auto focus system adjusts the optical lens to obtain a clearer image of a specific object. It should be disabled or set to manual mode during the entire shooting session.

Advanced users:
Set the focus to the corresponding hyperfocal distance of the selected aperture in the previous step.
Some hyperfocal distance calculators: cambridgeincolour.com - dofmaster.com or use this table.

Note: most cameras have a manual mode which automatically sets the white balance, aperture and focus to manual. It will save you the effort of looking for each option.

Thanks for reading, if you like this article or find it useful please leave a comment, rate it and/or share it with your friends.