Here's my first attempt at shooting a bunch of stills (9 in this case) with my $77. digicam and then stitching them
together (using all default software settings):
Of course, the original stitched image was almost 2 meg in size... I used Graphic Converter to scale and compress
it down for forum limits.
Several things come to mind as ways to improve this (aside from the obvious: a better camera and practice):
Shoot with more overlap between frames... presumably this would help the software produce less visible seams.
I think I must have had almost no overlap at all between images #8 and #9.
Make an effort to keep the horizon at the same height in each still... I seem to have lowered the camera by a few
degrees (raising the horizon in frame) as I shot from left to right. It looks like the software tried to compensate,
but this resulted in having to crop more off the top of the photo than I'd have liked. My cheapo digicam has no faux
ground-glass field markings to assist in maintaining a height reference... just have to do it by eye and better
next time.
Note the focal length being used to take the stills... I did not and simply guessed when the software asked me for that
figure... I assume that it uses that variable to help manipulate the images to remove the lens distortion at the edges
of each still image... to achieve a better result (minimal seam artifacts).
If necessary shoot stills at a higher rez (I think these were less than 1K each) so as to be able to leave plenty of
extra space above and below the main area of interest (in terms of a horizontal panorama like this). In the process
of joining the images and attempting to remove lens distortion, the software warps the top and bottom edges of
the resulting stitched image pretty significantly (hence the severe cropping). So, shoot at higher rez with fairly
loose framing.
Avoid having the sun directly in frame... unless you can live with the resulting flare and lowering of contrast in
that part of the finished image. Some of that could also be alleviated if I had been using a better camera with
manual exposure controls... mine's just everything-automatic: like it or lump it.
Still, kind of amusing for a first attempt. This is LA of course, shot as I was walking the pooch near my house
(which is behind me relative to the photo). That cluster of tall buildings near the left is downtown LA which is
about 5 miles away, and that other cluster of tall buildings near the right is Century City (where all the agents
have their offices), which is perhaps 7 or 8 miles away. If it had been a slightly clearer day when these pix were
shot, the Pacific Ocean would be visible out past Century City. That's the 101 freeway snaking through Hollywood
in the middle of the picture. If you look
very closely, you can just barely make out the Capitol Records building
with its trylon on top and the giant iPod ad (mostly blue and black) in Hollywood. I took the original stills last
February ...I think it was in the mid 70s at the time with very little wind.