Photography: Digital Panoramas

           With the technology there is today in digital photography, making huge pictures with digital stitching software is surprisingly simple.  The picture above was taken without a tripod with a 6.3 megapixel camera that has a resolution of 3072 x 2048.  This was four pictures stitched together resulting in a resolution of 7384 x 1823.  It was stitched together with ArcSoft Panorama Maker.  If I had been perfect in judging the 4 pictures the height would still be 2048 instead of 1823, but even with this miscalculation the software stitched it perfectly.

           Some of the newer cameras even have a "stitch-assist"  mode which displays 1/3 of the picture you just took so you can line it up with the next one.  Panoramas are usually more effective when taking pictures of far off landscapes, but they can still work with close objects you just have to be really good.  One crucial thing you must remember when trying these is to use the exact same exposure settings for each picture or some will be darker and lighter.  When taking the actual pictures you need to make sure you have at least 1/3 of each picture overlapping with the next one, this makes the stitching much more accurate.

           Sometimes when you try to stitch closer objects together the software misses errors and some of the picture will line up but some won't and you should look carefully at the finished product before you save it.  If you do find errors in the stitching, most stitch software has tools that help you fix it you just have to show the program where the problem is in the picture.