Photo-Stitched Panoramas – The Poor Man’s Wide-Angle

One of my favorite (and most useful) techniques as an Atlanta Real Estate Photographer is photo-stitching. As a Marietta Real Estate Agent that does his own photography I had to find a way to capture certain scenes that were either too tight or too expansive and this work around does the trick. The great thing about it is almost anyone can utilize this as it does not require any special features on a camera to use. Using the free software sold with most modern digital cameras, taking multiple pictures and stitching them into one panoramic image is simple, if not automatic.

Here are the six separate shots I took out of our hotel room in Fortaleza, Brazil on Christmas Eve a couple of years ago. This sort of scene is not unlike what I normally capture in my work as an Atlanta Real Estate Photographer. These shots are hand-held as I didn’t bring the tripod. I did use the “stitch assist” function on my Canon P&S, but if your camera doesn’t have that feature don’t worry. I have taken many photo-stitched pictures just by eyeballing it and they turned out great. Practice makes perfect!

… and here is the result from the software’s auto-stitch.

photostitch rough

Now with just a little cropping and post work, I got this…

final

With some practice, it becomes very easy to get some great shots that would otherwise be impossible to capture with a standard cameras field of view. This technique is especially useful when trying to get large, expansive spaces like a backyard. In fact, you can also get a good bit of mileage out of this shooting interiors as well. Just make sure you overlap each image by about 30% on the interior shots as it is easy for the photo to look “warped” if there is too much perspective shift from one shot to the next. Here is a link for FREE software and great info you can start using today.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/panoramic-software.htm