I recently discovered the fantastic program called Autostitch that will “stitch” together pictures into a panorama. Obviously, the pictures need to be taken from the same position and at differing angles, but Autostitch does all the hard work.
Here’s one of my better ones from today:
(click to enlarge)
There’s some obvious blurring and visual artifacts due to several factors: people/vehicles moving around between each frame, the photos were taken through glass at different (occasionally shallow) angles, and I moved the camera between two positions about 5 feet apart (different panes of glass, with different angles). Even so, it turned out reasonably well.
For those who are curious, the large, white-roofed building in the center is the Physics & Atmospheric Sciences building at the University of Arizona, which is where I spend most of my waking hours. The red-roofed, horseshoe-shaped building across the street from it is the Yavapai dormitory. In the lower-right-hand corner, there are four tall palm trees; barely visible between the heads of those trees is a weather research station. In the distance, slightly to the right of center is the university’s football stadium. The picture was taken from the 10th floor of the Gould-Simpson building on campus.
I should really see about getting more panoramic photos of various interesting places, like the local range. Taking pictures on campus is a pain, as there’s always people moving about.
On a similar note, is anyone aware of a flash or Java-based viewer for panoramic images? Displaying them in 2D creates a lot of distortions.