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I recognize that there are many who will be posting in this thread who are way better photographers that I am, have better equipment than I do, and are much better qualified to speak to some of the things which I speak to. However, people have asked me on the forums, on Facebook, and private messages, emails and even in person how I do some of the things that I do. So while I am no expert, I apparently do know some things that others do not and perhaps someone may benefit from something I can share. One of the things that I am a pretty good at is being a cheapskate. Never having had a lot of money, I typically learn to make do within a budget. I am going to speak a little bit to that and also to something more technical. The main subject of this post is going to be panoramas. In fact I think I posted a picture somewherein the forums which featured a panorama of the block I live on, taken from my driveway which is at the end of a cul-de-sac. I took the picture to capture the clouds. As I recall someone asked me about that photograph in whichever thread the photograph was. I think I gave a sort of brief answer but I probably should have been more thorough because the more people know the more likely they are to be able to duplicate a result. Many digital cameras and even phones have a built in panorama function. If yours does, your best source of information about stitching several still photos into a panoramic image, will probably be your instruction manual. However, there are several programs out there will that stitch several individual photographs into one seamless panorama image. I cannot go in to all of them, because I do not know them all, and though I have tried quite a few of them, not all of them worked that well. I’m probably getting ahead of myself here a little bit, because perhaps not everybody who will read this post will be familiar with some of the things I am speaking to. I guess I should start with the basics therefore. First off, panorama stitching is bringing several individual pictures together, into one single larger picture, when the pictures have some overlap of their subject. Below is an example, of pictures that can be stitched into a panoramic image: Overlapping Images Now, using one of those typical graphic programs, we can take each picture, separately, and paste them onto a background page, and then paste or drag them on top of each other, so that parts of the images align and overlap each other, thusly: Doing it with a typical photo/graphics manipulation program like above can get you some pretty decent results if you have good photos to work with, and you take your time doing careful work in the program. After arranging all of your pictures as above, you would probably want to crop the main part of the image, from the jagged edges. One could however, go the other way, and fill in the empty places with cloned pixels from nearby portions of the main part of the image. Both methods can give good results. The first method takes less time, the second makes for a fuller image. Now, it helps a lot, if care is taken while taking the pictures, with stitching in mind. First thing, is that one should not try to take the pictures to that they will stitch edge to edge, it is better to that the images overlap each other. I like to use about 1/3 of the image overlapped. I may add the reasons why later, but for now, trust me. It usually works better, and never works worse. Vertical Alignment Vertical alignment, is not hard to do if you have a nice flat horizon for reference, like on an ocean or a plain, but it is still something that you should try to pay attention to. If you have a jagged horizon, you may have a tendency, for example, to keep the mountain tops near the center of the image. Try not to do that, or else your panorama will either come out weird, or you will end up cropping a lot of the vertical image away, more about that later. You can use a tripod to help keep the images aligned vertically, but it you do not take the time to level the head of the tripod, you can end up with a panoramic sweep that goes at a slope, like lower left to upper right, for example. Much of the time, you may not have a tripod available. It is good to practice sweeping level without a tripod, before you need to do so in the field. I like to pivot at my waist, not with my neck, but there is something to keep in mind no matter how you do it. That part, I think I will need to create another graphic for, using just words, I might not be able to communicate this clearly. No matter the technique for that panning, turning with your head, or your body, or a tripod, try to make the camera pivot - inside the body of the camera, behind the lens: Angular Alignment When I speak of vertical and angular alignments, it should be pretty obvious that: Exposure Locking Your camera may have manual settings that let you lock the exposure from one picture to the next, check your owner's manual if you do not know how to do this, otherwise when the two different exposures are stitched together, your result may look like this: I know, this has been a painfully long post, but I wanted to cover most of what I could think of to help fellow novices to achieve a good result with panorama stitching. We are getting close to the end. Effect of Distance and of Parallel Panning Below, you can see example of the techniques in the diagram above. Most of this post, has been about camera and photo taking techniques, with a little bit about using graphic manipulation software to accomplish panorama stitching. Oddly, none of that is really why I created this post. I wanted to introduce people to a program, specifically for this purpose. I just thought that maybe, I needed a post little 'ground school' section on panoramas, because perhaps some who read this, will have little or no knowledge about the topic. Some of you are (no doubt) way ahead of me on this, and perhaps should have made a post like this instead of me doing it. Feel free to add tips and information to make the topic better, for those of us who are just beginners. An Alternative Stitching Method I began doing panoramas, with physical stitching, with real photographs, glued or taped together. Not sure when that would have been, but back before I bought my first digital camera, a Sony F505-V: It was a cool camera, in some ways, superior to any thing I have had since. Anyway, I only mentioned it, because I had to figure out what I had, so I could figure out, when that was. Well, it was a nice theory, but I still was not able to figure out when this was, but I am thinking about 1999 maybe. Really I thought it was a lot earlier, but from what I can tell from a little web research, it could not have been. I believe I said something earlier, about working on the cheap. That part is coming in a moment. Alternative stitch Method It was not long after this camera, that I started using digital photo stitching software. Some worked better than others, none that I tried worked great though. In 2014, I tried some beta program that had a lot of promise. It later became Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor. I still use I.C.E. today. I think the interface is pretty poor, it could be a little more informative than it is, but it is not that hard to figure out. What it does really well though,and the reason I use it is, that the program does a great job, of figuring out how to put the overlapping images together, adjust exposure, and tweak the shape to get them to fit. It works left to right, right to left, top to bottom or bottom to top. While it is great at doing these things, it is still best if you take the care to follow all of the tips which I shared on taking photos in a way which makes them good candidates for stitching panoramas. A major limitation, is that I believe it only works on the Windows OS, or perhaps other systems with Window imulators. I use it on Win 7 / 64, and it works great with that. On the plus side, is the price, one may download it for free! Thanks Microsoft. You can learn more about it here.