PacketRider: Panorama Photos

I have recently developed an interest in panorama photography. I suppose it has to do with when I got an iPhone 5s that has enough processing power to create relatively easy 180 degree panoramic pictures. I like to take walks around San Francisco, a beautiful city for panoramas. These little trips give me an opportunity to snap these pictures. The camera built into the iPhone 5s is adequate, but it has serious problems with light dynamic range as you can see from the pictures below. This camera has a hard time capturing bright areas such as the sky and the foreground at the same time. I have to choose either the bright area or the darker area as the focus. I am searching for an economical camera that can handle well these high contrasts.

Because a panorama picture is a composite from multiple pictures taken at different angles and displayed on a flat screen, the warping effect is unavoidable. The best way to view these picture is to save them locally on your computer. Open them with a picture viewing program and zoom in. You then have to scroll the picture left and right. When you scroll from left to right, imagine yourself standing in front of the scene and look at what is in front of you as you turn your head from left to right.

I am also interested in capturing more than 180 degrees. This will surely require special software and a tripod.

Bad panorama technique. Panorama pictures already pinch the two ends of the picture towards each other already. If there is no visual continuity as seen with the breakage of this straight road in the middle, this picture makes it took like these are two separate roads that are parallel.

Good white balance that shows both the sky and the ground. The building with flags on the left is the Fairmont Hotel where the "cheapest" room is $550 a night for a two beds.