CS3 Photomerge - exposure issue

[undies]

I decided to play with the new Photomerge feature in Photoshop CS3. This tool automates the process of creating panoramic shots. I manually set the aperture and shutter on my Canonet QL17 GIII, and then panned across a scene snapping six photos from a fixed vantage point. I fed the results into Photomerge and got this (after cropping):

http://www.theunderdahls.com/images/galleries/20071014/20071014_panS.jpg


Click here for a slightly larger version (http://www.theunderdahls.com/images/galleries/20071014/20071014_panM.jpg).

Overall it worked pretty well, but you can clearly see dark areas where each image was merged. Is there anything I could do with the camera to reduce this problem (such as a different aperture), or some special P-shop magic that can fix it?

[rogue_designer]

Shoot your multiple exposures vertically - the exposure difference and any distortion from the lens will be minimized.

You can also do a manual photo merge, with layer masks which will allow you to use localized exposure correction on the "seams" when in photoshop.

[nksyoon]

I've only used it once, but I don't see very obvious exposure differences, even though I shot in aperture priority mode. I think photomerge does some exposure equalization. Could it be lens vignetting? Maybe try shooting with more overlap between images so that the program has more to work with?

My sample:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2200/1526661240_a46a64ea44_b.jpg

Larger (2000 pixels wide): http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2200/1526661240_ce4bb6922d_o.jpg

[rlouzan]

Yep, light fall-off.

[undies]

Great tips folks, thanks! I really like the vertical shooting idea.