Photowalking for Panoramas

I went for a photowalk today. According to Wikipedia, "Photowalking is the act of walking with a camera for the main purpose of taking pictures of things that the photographer may find interesting." I was hoping to find a location overlooking Hybla Valley where I could experiment further with "AutoStitch Panorama" and "Pano," two iPhone apps for creating panorama photos. No luck. (I'll have to wait until fall, when deciduous tree leaves won't block the view.) Along the way home, I photographed a Magnolia flower (shown below). It's not a panorama photo, but my photowalk wasn't completely fruitless!

AutoStitch Panorama and Pano are available from the Apple App Store at the same price point ($2.99), but that's where the similarities end. AutoStitch creates panorama photos using selected photos from your photo albums; Pano creates panoramas using photos taken by a built-in camera controller. AutoStitch simply recommends photos overlap by 30%; Pano provides a "semi-transparent guide" to assist you in aligning overlapping photos. AutoStitch features a built-in cropping tool; Pano does not. AutoStitch features built-in help (tap "Info"); Pano provides an internal link ("Pano tips") to an external Web page ("Pano Tips and FAQ") that forces the user to leave the app in order to get help. That's a problem, but the bigger problem is the first opportunity to get help is after you make a pano! In my opinion, the nod goes to AutoStitch for its flexibility and user-friendliness.

I seem to be getting better results with AutoStitch Panorama than Pano, although it should be said that both apps require practice in order to become proficient in their use. Unless you're careful, you can get some strange ghosting effects in your panorama photos, as shown by two versions of the same panorama photo: the larger version is flawed by ghosting; the smaller version shows no ghosting. A multi-image panorama photo of the wetlands at Huntley Meadows Park is my best effort to date.

Tech Tips: The photo of a Magnolia flower (shown above) was taken using the built-in camera of my Apple iPhone 3G; the photo was geotagged automatically by the iPhone's GPS receiver in order to show the location of the photograph. GPS info is lost during the post-processing required to make panorama photos.