The Panorama feature of most digital cameras is perhaps the most under utilized feature available. Most digital cameras have poor wide-angle focal length. Panoramas effectively eliminate your wide-angle handicap by allowing you to take shots of the entire landscape and then stitch the parts together. Alas, the stitch function and software in most cameras is a manual process and is altogether missing in many digital SLRs.
Enter, Autostitch - download this lightweight stitcher, point it to a directory of images that need to be stitched and watch it work its magic. Another cool benefit of stitching, taking 20 megapixel images from your 5 megapixel camera! Just take 4 shots and stitch them together and you a nice detailed, wide angle 20 megapixel shot - no more megapixel envy.
Here is a before and after shot with the final result at the bottom.
1. You'll have much better luck if you can fix the exposure, metering, and related settings. That is, turn off as many auto features as possible. Otherwise your camera will snap different exposures (depending on how much sunlight it sees in any individual shot), giving you a 'patchy' panorama.
Assuming your camera lets you, start with the brightest part of your panorama and shoot it to be a touch overexposed. Lock down those settings and shoot the rest of the image. Some darker areas will appear underexposed, but they'll all look like they go together. You may still want to adjust levels in PS, but you can do it to the finished panorama, not each shot individually.
Of course, the patchwork panorama can look pretty cool on its own.
Posted at 6:25AM on Dec 19th 2005 by strunkl