Panoramas - I Joined the 21st Century

[Rigel]

Yes, I have finally moved into the 21st century by getting a smart phone. This came about only because my cell phone provider offered me a free upgrade for signing a 2 year contract.

I now have a Samsung GT-i5510M quad-band phone running Android 2.2.

One of the interesting features of the built in camera is the automatic panorama! You take the first shot, then start to rotate. The camera displays a green frame on the viewfinder with directional arrows (pointing which direction you need to adjust the camera) and as soon as it matches up, it automatically shoots the next frame. You keep going until you have what you want then press the "take photo" again to turn it off.

Below is a quick pano I took of our co-op common area just to try it out. Not too shabby and I think I can put this to use in Lightwave!

[Woody]

I hear you Rigel. Congrats on your arrival in the 21st Century! I just got Nancy an iPhone 4S about two weeks ago and she loves it. Me, I'm still using the ol' free phone that comes with the service. If I had my ''druthers I'd probably be using a dag-gone Jitterbug phone.

That panorama app looks cool, and a cheap and dirty way to shoot environments for your models!

[Rigel]

The smart phone will solve another problem. What do to with myself when I'm sitting in a waiting room somewhere. I'll be downloading a solitaire game or two onto it. Nice thing is, I have a wireless network at home so the phone can surf the internet that way (no extra data charges).

[wave of light]

Welcome to the 21st Century Rigel. I recently picked up a HTC running Android (was using a Nokia e71). I now hardly ever use the laptop downstairs any more as the screen is big enough to browse the net and do emails. And now most of them have a decent camera, so grabbing textures whilst on the move means I don't have to carry a camera around any more.

[bmckain]

Welcome to never being able to have any free, private and personal time. That's a cool app, going to have to see if there's something like that for the EVO.

[Rigel]

Of course, the major downside to these panos is the fact that the image size is quite small. I'd pay for an addon to the Canon software that would give it that feature; it's a 10 megapixel vs the 3.2 megapixel camera in the phone.

[Matt]

Congrats Rigel--I've got a Galaxy S2 myself and first saw an app like this running off ICS about 6 weeks ago. Since ICS was a leaked copy it didn't work so well and half the time crashed the app due to the dodgy drivers they had to work with. Might be worth taking another looksie, even though the camera on mine is only 8MP--I don't get 12 unless I'm on the DSLR.

[Rigel]

My phone's camera is only 3.2 MP so the panos come out very small.

I was browsing through the Samsung apps that can be accessed from the phone and I noticed they have a panorama app that can be downloaded (for a fee). The description says it works the same as this with the camera built into your phone. You might have a look for that.

[Matt]

Thanks mate, I shall

[Rigel]

Just an update: this only shoots a 180 pano at most. You need to shoot 2 panos and stitch them together for a 360.

[Starbase1]

I'm a huge fan of panoramic photography, (though I notice my efforts never do well in photo challenges...)

It's the main reason I paid out an unpleasantly large amount for a super wide angle lens for my DSLR... I really like the way you can photograph something very large when you can't back off enough to get the whole thing in a normal short. By picking sub shots with few people in you can do wonders in eliminating passers by, and it often gives you a new view of something that has been thoroughly photographed into being a cliché.

If you start doing a lot of it, you might want to take a look at PT Gui, my preferred stitching software. Does a great job even with hard to match images, can correct for exposure differences, can do full 360x180 environment maps, and also put each element into a separate photoshop layer if you want complete control over which bit is used where...

[Rigel]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll see if they have a Mac version of that.