Robert Watcher
Well-known member
I’ve done complex pano on a couple of occasions in years past, using expensive dedicated software to stitch the shots together. They required a lot of time, from making sure my camera was set Manually, to the process of getting the final image stitched right with mismatches.
Most of my panoramas are not that important to get perfect or worries about ultimate accuracy, and so for recent years I have resorted to my iPhone that I always have with me. Most of the time, I don’t want to go through a process.
I’ve been playing with Olympus SCN modes the last couple of days, and this morning took cam E-M10 w/14-42 kit lens out into street in front of my house - and snapped off a series of 10 images with the camera set to the Panorama mode. The camera does not generate the stitched image, but what I really liked is that once the first image was taken, exposure and focus were locked so that all 10 images were consistent for a better stitch - something I normally have to do manually, or forget about and end up being a nightmare when I tried to stitch together after.
As for software, Olympus recommends stitching in their proprietary software. But I have also being checking other features on my iPad Affinity Photo app. So I downloaded the files from camera wirelessly, into a Folder that I created in Files. Dragged those files into Affinity Photo after creating a New Panorama. Let it go through the process, and what a remarkable job that program did, with few mismatches - even with the complex wires in the sky, and the car driving through from the right side. If there were mismatches, it is unbelievably easy to select the tool that shows an overlay of the different frames with gray mask over top of all but the selected one, and a quick brush stroke allows me to reveal or hide any parts that I want to show or don’t want to. I didn’t spend the time on this one - this is straight with cropping out the white areas.
This Olympus Scene mode with Affinity Photo, are going to be a great tandem for me I can see. I will still be using my iPhone that is always with me for most, but I won’t tend to shy away now when I want a little more control. And of course this method is for simple quick handheld panoramas - not serious high quality ones with proper pano head settings to eliminate distortions and all.
Most of my panoramas are not that important to get perfect or worries about ultimate accuracy, and so for recent years I have resorted to my iPhone that I always have with me. Most of the time, I don’t want to go through a process.
I’ve been playing with Olympus SCN modes the last couple of days, and this morning took cam E-M10 w/14-42 kit lens out into street in front of my house - and snapped off a series of 10 images with the camera set to the Panorama mode. The camera does not generate the stitched image, but what I really liked is that once the first image was taken, exposure and focus were locked so that all 10 images were consistent for a better stitch - something I normally have to do manually, or forget about and end up being a nightmare when I tried to stitch together after.
As for software, Olympus recommends stitching in their proprietary software. But I have also being checking other features on my iPad Affinity Photo app. So I downloaded the files from camera wirelessly, into a Folder that I created in Files. Dragged those files into Affinity Photo after creating a New Panorama. Let it go through the process, and what a remarkable job that program did, with few mismatches - even with the complex wires in the sky, and the car driving through from the right side. If there were mismatches, it is unbelievably easy to select the tool that shows an overlay of the different frames with gray mask over top of all but the selected one, and a quick brush stroke allows me to reveal or hide any parts that I want to show or don’t want to. I didn’t spend the time on this one - this is straight with cropping out the white areas.
This Olympus Scene mode with Affinity Photo, are going to be a great tandem for me I can see. I will still be using my iPhone that is always with me for most, but I won’t tend to shy away now when I want a little more control. And of course this method is for simple quick handheld panoramas - not serious high quality ones with proper pano head settings to eliminate distortions and all.
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