Digital Photographer's Software Guide - Bertemes - Net

The market for photo stitching and panoramic software has polarized between two
extremes. At one end, the main users are real estate agents and their suppliers who want
a quick and convenient way of creating virtual tours of houses and property developments;
at the other end are experimental photographers who want to show the world
in a new way. Quite a few companies and their panoramic products fell through the gap
in the middle when these two extremes suddenly drifted apart.
Special Equipment
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Panorama Software:
Photo Stitching and
Virtual Tours
Although some of the software described here can make a reasonable job of stitching
hand-held photographs, the technique really requires the use of a special pano head on
a firm tripod. The head makes the camera pivot around a point within the lens in such a
way that all the images appear to have been taken from the same location. Even the
slightest error can cause ripples in the finished panorama.
A pano head costs a few hundred dollars and is something that only the enthusiast or
professional tends to buy. With it you can take dozens of pictures for a single composite
image, using a standard or even a telephoto lens. The resulting panorama does not have
to be 360 degrees, but can be simply a large planar image at extremely high resolution.
Photo stitching is a good way of turning a relatively low-res camera into an ultra-high-res
tool.