Panoramas: Getting a continuous sky colour

Shooting in manual is a good start. Are you keeping the exposure the same?

I am, yes. Each image looks exposed the same too, including the sky. Not sure what is happening in stitching. Everything else is uniform, so I don't understand why there would be issues with the sky.

This is indeed rather odd. I'd have expected 'manual everything' to have done as you would expect. The foreground looks generally OK, but the last segment on the right does look brighter lower down. If you shot in RAW, has the raw converter done something odd? Also, which stitching method are you using?

Are you using a polarizer? That will have an adverse effect in something like this.

Jim

Shot in RAW and converted with Canon's software. All the images when viewed alone look to be the same exposure, so maybe the stitching software is doing something weird. I don't remember the name of the software (am at work now), but it came with my Panasonic LX-3. I think there is another stitching program on my computer that came bundled with the rest of the Canon stuff, maybe I'll try that.

Only filter I had on was a UV. Perhaps I should take it off just to see if that had an adverse effect.

Hey, maybe it is a bit of glare on the glass/filter? I'll put the hood on (it wasn't on at the time), take the filter off, and try again.

If it helps, this is with a 5D2 and 28mm f/1.8 lens @ f11

Oh, and I took the shots using live view. Don't know if that might make a difference... I wear a pretty heavy prescription, making the optical viewfinder quite uncomfortable and difficult to use.

Whenever I see something like this I tend to blame it on left-over lens vignetting which can still be visible at small apertures. Clear blue skies make it more apparent. Here it seems that the image is brighter to the left, but I suspect that may just be an impression due to how the stitching is done (left side is covered by another image).

I would check the original photos and check the pixel values in the sky in the specific areas. Also take a shot of a blank target with the lens stepped down and increase contrast to evaluate whether it's just vignetting or something else with the lens.

It may not be something you can fix in the camera - exposure times are never 100% precise anyway. Generally good stitching software have blending routines that deal with this kind of issue. Post-processing in Photoshop can get rid of the problem easily too.

Hmm, vignetting may be an issue. Good point. Perhaps I took too many images? I shot about 8 images in portrait orientation to get this, so there was significant overlap. Maybe I took more on the left side so it registered more of the dark vignetting, and less on the right side so it appears brighter...

I'd suggest downloading and 'trialing' better stitching software like PTgui or Autopano Pro