The above are the result of PanoLab, Hugin, Calico, and a single shot with a very wide angle lens (Canon’s 10-22mm, effectively 16mm on my Rebel XTi). The first three originated on my iPhone and the PanoLab shot was stitched and originally uploaded to Flickr on my iPhone (though I have since done some color enhancement and reuploaded the photo from my MacBook Pro). Hugin is GPL, the other solutions are less free (in both senses).

I spent some time looking for panorama-related apps for the iPhone and came up with the following:

• Panorama by Airshed
• Panoramas by Helix Interactive
• TripStitch by Byteslice Software
• Pano by Debacle Software
• Panoramascope by Phil Endicott
• PanoLab and PanoLab Pro by Originate Lab

I’ve actually played with PanoLab a bit (landscape, portrait) after seeing p0ps Harlow using it.

I’ve been using DoubleTake to stitch panoramas for a while, but when I discovered p0ps Harlow’s photos and learned he was using Calico Panorama, I figured it was worth taking a look.

DoubleTake has done a great job for a number of my photos (Mt. Moriah, San Francisco Motorcycles, Mt. Mondadnock), and when the automatic stitch failed, I could manually reposition (or re-order) the photos. I could also adjust the individual images to make them better match each other. It worked well with landscape panoramas, but also left me frustrated with a number of other images. The motorcycles I noted above, the Prelinger Library, and the view from my roof all took a lot more work than I expected. And DoubleTake can only work with a single row of images.

Calico, on the other hand, seemed to allow a photographer to shoot photos like a drunk with a shotgun. And my first test surprised me with how it bent the geometry of the two photos to magically align them despite lens the distortions and slightly different angles.

But my second test revealed some frustrations. Calico’s ability to automatically align photos was amazing, but not perfect. There was Corey, but nothing I could find in the UI would allow me to reposition that frame.

Not that DoubleTake could do any better. The automatic stitching failed to even get the frames in the right order, and my best efforts couldn’t make the geometry work.

Unfortunately, now I can’t use either of them. DoubleTake allows me to tweak the image, but I now know it takes too long to get the results I now expect. And Calico will get me almost everything I expect, but won’t let me tweak it to make it perfect. I wish these two could work together, because the product I want has the best features of each.

panorama, stitching, software, Calico Panorama, DoubleTake, comparison, photograpy

I’m coming to learn that p0ps has a number of interesting things going on, but it was his panoramas stitched from pictures taken by iPhone that caught my attention first. Above is the J Train somewhere between Fulton and City Hall.

I’d thought the iPhone’s camera was pretty decent, p0ps’ work shows it off.

J Train, panorama, p0ps, photo, iPhone

Oregon City apparently boasts one of only four municipal elevators worldwide. One hundred thirty feet tall, with an observation deck at the top, it seemed to be worth stopping for. Jason wrote in to Roadside America explaining:

It began as a water-powered elevator in 1915, but was upgraded to an electric-powered elevator in 1954. It is an example of Googie architecture, which is reminiscent of the space-age housing structures in the Jetson’s cartoon show.

The picture above is a badly shot and badly joined panorama from atop the observation deck. I was attempting to capture both the view and artworks below each window, but I didn’t do it right. The larger size actually reveals some detail, though.

oregon, oregon city, oregon city or, elevator, observation deck, panorama, travel, municipal elevator

An unconventional panorama in Rockport’s Pigeon Cove. From left to right stand Will and Corey. Of course, it looks better bigger.

Note: this was just a sideshow on our Weird Travel Tour.

tags: corey, cove, group portrait, massachusetts, ocean, pano, panorama, pigeon cove, portrait, rockport, rockport ma, seaside, will

I actually like the look of a broken panorama, where the borders of each photo are clearly visible — even emphasized. But last night I got the notion of doing a seamless pano and found DoubleTake, a $12 shareware app that makes the process pretty darn easy. The sunrise shot above (larger sizes) was my first crack at it, but I was so sure I’d use it again (and again) that I’ve already registered it.

I’ve got more panoramas at Flickr. I still like the broken panorama effect, but I see a few compositions that I might re-do as seamless.

tags: borders, doubletake, edges, mac os x, pano, panorama, panoramic, panoramic photos, photography, seamless, seamless panorama, seamless stitching, shareware, software, sunrise

I climbed the Osceolas with Will and Adam this weekend. It was my first overnight in a long, long time, and their first mountaintop sunrise. I used to do sunrises on Mt. Monadnock, but I’d lost the habit.

More pictures of the Osceola adventure at Flickr.

tags: 4000 footer, camping, geo:lat=44.006336, geo:lon=-71.547260, geotagged, hike, hiking, mount, mountain, mt osceola, mt. osceola, new hampshire, osceola, panorama, scenic, sunrise, waterville valley