Outdoor Panorama Pictures

[WSD223]

I use my G2 to take a lot of outdoor pictures, and I find the panorama setting along with Stitch Assist to be a wonderful feature of the G2.

One problem I ran into was the auto focus of the G2. It seems that when it can't get a focus lock it defaults to about six or eight feet away. For a landscape picture that is way too close. To solve this problem I have to go to manual focus. It's the little button top left side labeled MF. I find that the G2 has problems focusing on objects like bushes and dark canyon walls in shadow. My panorama pictures tend to come out better if I set the MF to infinity and take the series of pictures - of course that's if everything I want in my picture is more than 20 - 30 feet away. Even if I get a focus lock on all the individual pictures in the panorama, sometimes the difference in what the camera focused on is noticeable. Things like half of an object has a different focus than the other half - like the left half of a boulder has a softer focus than the right half. That doesn't happen if I keep the Manual Focus set at the same setting for the whole series of pictures.

[leony]

You can shoot in any mode, and then Canon's Stitch-Assist software will do the work for you - no need to use the mode for that on the camera. Kudos for the MF. and I'd also suggest to shoot in Manual mode so that your exposure doesn't change from shot to shot. Stitch-Assist mode locks the exposure for the whole series automatically, so you don't need to.
I've tried shooting in M with MF and setting the appereture to f/8.0 (shutter set to properly expose at f/8.0)- at the widest zoom setting; this gives amazing depth of field. When I manually focus, I start at infinity, and move focus closer until it's at a point when focusing any closer renders things very far (the ones at real infinity) not sharp. that setting lets me to set MF to maximum hyperfocal distance(!) so that infinity is at focus, and things as close as possible to me are also in focus. Try this out, it worked for me great.

[WSD223]

The panorama setting on the camera locks exposure settings on the first picture, but not focus. So assuming you like the exposure settings chosen by the camera, it is a couple steps less to do than using the M setting and choosing your own aperture and shutter speed.

Same exposure settings are as important as same focus setting for all the same panorama series bacause you can see the difference in exposure between two pictures as a line slightly lighter on one side and darker on the other when the panorama is assembled.

[Mortsid]

The G2 needs something distinct to focus on. While in panorama mode, select an object the distance most of your panorama will be at that is distinct and press shutter release half way down. Then point camera at point where you wish to start your panorama.