PDA Mobile: Canadian Panoramas

January 29, 2009

Canadian Panoramas

The super-wide lens was one my first extra purchases after getting into DSLRs. But even 10mm doesn't quite get everything, not to mention the severe perspective distortion at such short focal lengths. I knew all about image-stitching and stacking from my astronomy days, but thanks to the marvels of technology, now one can put multiple pictures together automagically with point-and-click simplicity.

Of course, I was too cheap to pay for real software to do the work. Open-source comes to the rescue once again in the form of Hugin. Unfortunately, like other open-source software, the interface is convoluted and inscrutable, especially on the Mac where it suffers even more in comparison. Thankfully, also thanks to astronomy days, inscrutable imaging software is old hat for me, too, and I was able to slowly work out the proper parameters and projections and corrections to start getting some decent results. I also learned to set the camera correctly (shoot in portrait, locked white balance, fixed focus, manual exposure settings, etc.) to give good input for the software.

All that came in handy on our trip to the Canadian Rockies. Endless vistas of pristine mountain scenery, fall colors, and icy glaciers. The rushed tour group travel schedule means no time for lens-changing and tripod-setting. So fix the settings on the bus, then jump off and snap off a quick sweep of the scene to stitch later. Took quite a lot of post-processing time once we got home, but it was a nice way to revisit the experiences in the comforts of home.

Click to see the original high-resolution images:

13 shots:

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Two bracketed sets:

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27 shots:

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Nine shots: