On my recent family vacation in Colorado and Utah, I had an incredible array of photo opportunities, and over a week to take pictures, most of which were ideal for wide-angle shots. And then, on day 2, my wide angle lens gave up the ghost, leaving me with only a telephoto lens… and my iPhone 4.
I took several hundred pictures with the iPhone, most of which were very good! But the one I’ve had the most fun with – or rather, the eleven I’ve had most fun with – are the images I used to stitch together the panorama you see below. This is eleven images, at 5 megapixels each, straight from the phone, stitched together in Photoshop CS5 and then exported to Zoomify.The final image is 65 inches wide and 7.25 inches tall at 240ppi… pretty hefty for a phone cam image!
Click the image to see the Zoomify view in a new window. You can use the slider to zoom in and out, and use the arrow buttons or just drag the image to pan around.
Sure, this image has flaws and warts, and is a bit uneven in tone due to the auto-exposure feature of the iPhone. But still, you have to admit this is a pretty impressive image to have captured with a device that slips into my pocket.
I did take quite a few panoramic shots with my “real” camera and telephoto lens, and I’ve been working on a few of those images as well. Watch this space in the future for some of those images.