There are many panoramic applications out there, for a review of their various strenghs & weeknesses look at:
http://www.panoguide.com
The version of Panorama Tools (NOT the ADG Panorama Tools) reviewed at this site is an old 2.1 vresion, the current version is V2.6.
I use Panorama Tools (PanoTools)
www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~dersch/
for VERY Detailed tutorials:
http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~bernardk/tutorials/360/index.html
PanoTools are very powerful & when I originally DLL'd (it's free) I was intenting it for general photography:
converting fisheye=>rectilinear format,
straightening barrel/pincushion distortions,
correcting light falloff of wideangle lenses,
correcting some of the chromatic abherations of wideangle lenses.
For examples of usage:
www.philohome.com/barrelpers/barrelpers.htm
www.caldwellphotographic.com/TutorialsArticles.html
While I've produced images writing scripts for this application & photoshop plugin, it's much easier to buy one of the modestly priced graphically driven front ends:
PTGui (
www.ptgui.com),
PTAssembler (
www.tawbaware.com),
PTMac (
www.kekus.com).
PTOpenGui (
www.nic.fi/~juhe/ptbcbgui/)
I use a monopod, joining the images together would be easier if I used a tripod (less positonal errors) but my subjects would swim off.
The great strengh of PanoTools is that it warps the images for best fit but each exposure is a separate layer of a photoshop file so I can manually mask to determine the best join, or if one subject
moves between shots I can use only the most photogenic view in the final image.
360' every direction is an awesomely large area to cover with any lens.
Mal.
