Radiance of the Seas: A Short Stitching Example

I wandered around downtown Vancouver yesterday as I needed to get out of the house for a little bit. It was the day that Apple released the iPhone 4 to Canadians too so I did managed to head over to the Apple store. No, I did not pick up a new iPhone (though one day I would like to). I did see a couple of people waiting in line though; Ariane and Duane. They waited between 4-7 hours to get their hands on at least one Apple iPhone.

After chatting for a while I headed down towards Waterfront Station. As I got closer I noticed there was a cruise ship in port. The RCL logo was barely visible on the smoke stack of the ship, but I realized it was of the Radiance Class vessels from the Royal Caribbean Cruise line. Why is this special? Well it’s not really special, but I have been on her sister ship the Serenade of the Seas and I would love to be able to take another cruise sometime on this particular class of vessel or even the Oasis Class such as the Oasis of the Seas or the Allure of the Seas. I took a 7-night Alaskan cruise many years ago and every time I see the RCL ships in port it makes me want to go on another cruise.

Back to the purpose of this post. Not all that exciting of a photo right? The composition isn’t the greatest ether. It was shot at 70mm on my Canon 7D, which means its similar to shooting a 112mm on a full-frame camera. Not typically a wide-angle focal length and I could not move further back to get the entire ship in the frame with one shot. Too bad the bow of the ship is obscured by the walkway too. The shot is actually made up of 6 shots stitched with a programmed called AutoStitch, a neat bit of magic though. If you have never created a panoramic photo, I would suggest checking out the free program. You don’t need to make 360-degree panoramics, but being able to create a wider-angle shot than you could with your camera in 1 photograph can usually be extremely handy. It also can lead to some very interesting perspectives too!

What better way to create a wide-angle image without the need of a wide-angle lens? Granted, 6 shots as opposed to 1 shot is a bit much, but with a program like Autostitch, it really makes it fairly simple to do. Typically when you want to create a panoramic of photos, the best thing to do is ensure you overlap the edges of the photos. The above photos, as you can see, if you stacked them on top of one another would overlap. This helps reduce the alignment issues one might have when stitching. If you can also lock the Exposure of your camera to take multiple photos, this will also allow for a more natural look. Sometimes the camera might try and compensate for exposure throughout the image, using an AE Lock (exposure lock) can make sure the lighting on the subject stays relatively the same throughout all shots taken.

So my task for you, go out there and create some wider-angle or panoramic shots using a program such as Autostitch!