More Panoramas with the Canon G9

Today was a great day of weather out on the Strait. Robert called last night to suggest we get out and catch some more salmon. The local outdoor columnist put out a column that said the salmon were in Sieku in big numbers, so it seemed like a great opportunity to get some salmon in the freezer and more practice with the G9.

Well, lets just focus on the camera, shall we? I took several photos, and 3 sets of panos. More learning on the process building good panoramas. I remembered to use a middle length lens setting, and to take shots in the portrait orientation. I also tried to take a lot of pictures for each pano. On this score I didn't do so well.

The G9 has a setting that is supposed to help you get all the photos you need, lined up with a good amount of overlap. The LCD screen shows the last picture you have taken, and as you compose the next one, you can see the overlap. All well and good, if you can see the LCD well enough. On the water, in the sun, I found this difficult, and as a result my overlap was not as good as it should have been. The results are that some overlaps don't quite line up.

I forgot to manually gain up the LCD to a brighter level. I really need to do some basic exercises to get this skill developed. Nonetheless, I have put a couple up a Picasa web. There are two views of the same panorama, one done in HP Photosmart Stitch and the other in Canon Photostitch.

The process of building a pano was easier and faster in the HP program. It does not allow any manipulation, it does all the thinking for the photographer. When it can't make an edge of one photo meet the next one, it does some algorythmic blending that is OK. Overall, this program gives good results, if the photographer does his or her job.

In the Canon program, things go much slower. I like the ability to make edges match up for yourself, you can beat the program in many cases. None of the individual photos in this series mated all that well, and Canon lets you see that.

Overall, the HP program to me is better for these kind of "grab shots" that I have done here. The results using a tripod, and some careful framing may be different, we shall see. Of course, shooting photos to be stitched together from the deck of a pitching boat underway is not the way its done. But it is the way these were done.

Clicking on the photo below will take you to my album, where you can see the comparison.

Photography