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Saturday, June 29, 2013

I am posting a picture I took today from a little GE 1200 point and shoot camera. About $89.00 from your local Walgreen's. With an accompanying memory card, add another 15 to 20 dollars.

I have had two of these now. The first I put into my pocket one day and, by sliding it into my pocket, I accidentally slid open the lens cover and scratched the surface of the lens. I noticed sometime after when I kept getting an odd blur in exactly the same place in pics I took.

I like these things (these GE cameras) because they have this cool panorama picture taking feature. There are smart phones now that do this as well, and in an easier fashion. With these GE cameras you have to shoot 3 pictures carefully, and then the camera internal software "stitches" the images together. I have learned a couple things from using these. Please find below one lesson learned.

Here is a panorama shot where the "stitching" ended up making the image have a kind of "cubist" look to it:


If you click on it, you will see how the image has arched segments that were attempted to be married together.

Here is nearly the same thing but without as much of the segmented archway affectation:


I figured out why this is so. It has to do with the horizontal line you shoot along when taking the original 3 images the resulting stitched composite is made from. In the image above I panned (moving from right to left or left to right horizontally as if taking a frying pan by the handle and moving it on top of a stove by keeping the center of the pan in the same place yet rotating the pan by the handle from left to right or vice versa) the camera on a tripod, and kept the center of focus along the horizontal line the top of the benches create. It isn't perfect, but by keeping closer to that horizontal line, one gets a better "stitched" image end product.

Thanks to Day and Night Coffee Shop in Mansfield, Pa for allowing me to shoot there, and to whomever did the works in frame.