Panorama in 9 Parts

If you have tried out the sticking together of multiple images to make a panoramic view of anything thing close, you have probably run in the problems of parallax, which makes it hard to align the close and far objects up. However I like the altered perspective of these panoramics and I don't like well intentioned rules like "Don't attempt panorams of close objects".






So here is a little about how I have discovered you can get reasonable panoramas of close objects.

1) Use a tripod so the rotation can be guaranteed to be in the same plane (My tripod has a built-in bubble level and reference marks so I can get the rotation between each image can be fairly exact and horizontal)
2) Find a good reference line in the distance (the horizon is perfect) and center the image on that If this line is not at the center of the image you take the line will become a curve in the final assembled image)
3) Use a vertical (portrait) orientation, this means you are using thinner bits of image, in the horizontal plane, when you stitch them together.This significantly reduces the degree of parallax shift of the near objects at the edge of each image, and is the secret to getting the stitching to work.
4) Zoom in a bit, This will give you more images and even thinner strips, the second bit of the above secret.
5) Use an Olympus camera! Well Olympus have a nice panoramic mode, providing you use an Olympus media card. Then the Olympus Camedia software automatically reassembles the series of such panoramic photos (well most of the time it does!). Just joking about the Olympus camera, you can probably use any panoramic sticking software. It is just that I really like the Olympus system.