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Erik the Nav
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Erik the Nav
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PostTue May 07, 2002 7:12 pm 
This topic came up in the headlamp thread, perhaps I can troll for thoughts on digital cameras.. spec I'm looking for (and I'm an idiot about photography) is a way to control exposure. I want to get back to playing with stitching together panoramas (the few I've done are at http://www.wingren.com/qtvr/index.html , and note that windows media player will garble them, need to see in quicktime player ). If you look at those you will see (among other flaws) banding created by varying exposure in the different still shots stitched together to make the panorama. Presumably (help me, photo people!), the auto exposure feature on my purely auto control camera is (part of?) the culprit for this banding - to clarify, the banding is an artifact of lighter/darker sky in the different exposures. No doubt with tons of photoshop time it could be fixed up, but I'd rather avoid any more of that than is necessary. So -- would exposure control help this? And question two: I don't wanna spend tons of money, I don't think I need a 3 megapixel camera -- I wanna cheapo, but with this one feature. Anything come to mind? other desireables: light weight & compact, standard mount for tripod, USB, macro mode (shopping again partly driven by wanting flower pics from last weekend for identification), sound recording, optical zoom, and what else do I want? Oh yeah, and cheap. And yeah, I should just call a salesman. But I value your input. PS Best pans: Sahale, Swiftcurrent, and Muana Kea. Most amazing thing, how well the waves stitched together in Waimanu pan.

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Tom
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PostTue May 07, 2002 8:22 pm 
Erik, the banding is just a fact of life when taking panoramas. Most digital cameras will lock the exposure to that of the first picture taken when you put the camera in stitch mode so exposure control is probably not your answer. I've found stitching software can make a big difference. I use some stitch software that came with an old canon digital camera that's far superior to anything that comes with the newer cameras (go figure). It stitches perefectly as long as you line things up reasonably well. My trick is to shoot multiple panoramas of the same scene and keep the ones that stitch the best (and carry lots of memory). I would advise against getting a 2MP camera. You're going to kick yourself when you get that great shot with your 2MP digicam and can't print an 8x10 (trust me, I have a few waah.gif). I would recommend the canon elph/ixus series if not for the fact they are 2MP and macro performance & battery life are not their strong points. Give it a few months and there will be a lot more "compact" 3MP cameras to choose from. dpreview.com is probably the best resource for digital camera info on the net - their reviews tell it like it is and they have some great forums if you have questions.

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Erik the Nav
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Erik the Nav
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PostTue May 07, 2002 8:30 pm 
I swear 8x10 prints just aren't important to me! I coulda been clearer about the panoramas: my interest in in Quicktime VR Pans more than for print or for "wide stills" digitally (then I'd be more interested in big resolution!). I've never used any built in panorama feature on a camera (I think my ol' busted one has such a feature) - I have used some pretty good software that came with my old camera, but my real interest in in full 360 deg QTVR movies - I've got QTV Authoring Studio, which can be weird and persnickety and lamely low useability features for Apple software, but which does pretty darn good work. So, I'm thinking some feature like "lock exposure" would be just the ticket - except I'll make the pan myself later out of the stills. Thanks for the dpreview.com tip (and all the input!), I'll take a peek.

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