I have been using Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) to keep the sun from banding. And I really work for a pano layout whenever I can on a sunset. The picture above is 3 sets of 5 pictures ( -2,-1,0,+1,+2 exposures) first merged into 3 hdr photos and then merged into a single hdr-pano. The mini 3 does shoot the 5 bracketed shot with one click thankfully. Unfortunately I got to the site 15 minutes early and shot off 28 bursts of 5 shot brackets waiting for the right colors. This has forced me to stay disciplined and erase from the disk all the underlying or not used photos. But in the end I really like the hdr and pano combination.