Tutorial: Panos using your point and shoot Canon.

Chris hucking a sicky, gnar-licious, spread eagle while Nick looks on...

Since people often ask me how to make these huge panos...here's a quick tutorial.

This is for the Canon users...I'm not familiar with other brands... and Canons that has the stitch function.  Some of the older cameras have it, some of the newer ones have it as well... make sure your canon has this stitch function before you buy one.

1. take pics in "stitch" mode...the pics will be named as STA files on the memory card.
2. go to www.autostitch.com and download their program...and donate money if you are in the 1%... or really like them.  
3. Run the program...and voila! an exquisite pano, ready for you to edit, print... then brag about.  

Here are some good ones...
http://telek.smugmug.com/gallery/1207298

Some tips...
When taking the pics...

• make sure to hold the camera steady. One blurry pic is all it takes to ruin the pano.
• you don't have to line up the pics exactly, just make sure that the pics are take level.  
• you can organize the pics by date taken, that's the easiest way to get the pics organized.

Using autostitch...

• I usually go to options, under "edit" and set the scale to 25% for the initial viewing...then if I like the pic, or I think it's ready for printing (8$/ft2 for matte, 10$ for glossy, and 12$ for super glossy at Copy Central on Shattuck Square in Berkeley), I'll set the scale to 100%...the rest of the options, I haven't really played with. 

Update:

• These days I'm a pano dork, so I take a lot of panos.  Some come out ok, some don't.... it's really hard to tell when you are taking the pics to know how it's gonna turn out.  But because I've been taking so many panos, I purchased Autopano Pro, so I can stitch & render all of my images in one click.  It's a lot quicker than doing these panos one at a time...