Panoramics are interesting pieces of art. They are a slight exaggeration of reality we see, as we cannot see all of the scene before us with our own eyes so (surprise!) we have to pan our eyes to see it all.

Thanks to Photoshop CS2's Photomerge, and the magic of layers and masks, we can stitch together many pictures to form a really wide scene.

My method while taking these is as follows: choose a small aperture (f/8, f/11, etc.), go to center-weighted metering, and choose a shutter speed which is an average of all the shutter speeds the meter suggests as you pan about the scene. Lock in this exposure. Pay attention to the edges of the viewfinder and make a 20% or so overlap from the end of one frame to the beginning of the next. Unfortunately, lens distortion (especially with wide-angle lenses) near the view peripheries is a pitfall which will probably involve some additional post-processing work.

A tripod with a panning head works best to assure one of level pictures throughout, though not all of mine here involved a tripod, so a greater workload awaited me in post-processing.

I'm not sure that this space is sufficient to describe the Photoshop methods in detail, partly because I'm still learning and refining my techniques. Most of the post-processing work occurs at and near the seams of the merged pictures. This involves how best to mask out the seams as well as distortions near the edges.

I haven't tried out any of the various panoramic stitching programs out there. I'm sure they vary in the quality of their output as well as their cost and ease of use. I think that Photoshop offers the most control over the results, though it certainly isn't an easy program to learn and use...and it is rather costly.

I'll probably add more to this gallery as my competency in this area grows.