Panoramas Made Easy

Last week Fedex dropped off a small package with another high tech gadget. The shiny box contained a panorama base – a device for easily capturing photographic panoramas.

Let’s back up to last October when I met Howard Chen at the PhotoPlus Expo in New York. An attractive photo in front of his booth caught my attention. He proceeded to show me how the e-Filming PS-30B Digital Drive Panorama Base automates the making of panorama photographs with popular DSLR cameras: mount the camera on the base, press a few buttons on the control panel and press the start button. A few seconds later and you’ve captured a set of high resolution images ready to be combined (stitched together).

In addition to the drive unit, the package contains a vertical bar mount, a remote controller and control cables. A cable connects the device to the remote control socket on your DSLR camera. The six included control cables are usable with most of the popular DSLR cameras. I spent a few minutes installing the Cool Stitch software from the included CD-ROM and printing the 16-page user’s manual. The manual describes the five options available from the LCD control panel: shoot, time, speed, function and language. However in practice, I found that I needed to change only the shoot option. There’s also a short article “How to Shoot Photos for Great Looking Panoramas” that appears when you run the Cool Stitch software. I recommend that you print this document and carefully follow the several helpful tips.

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Sadly, summer is quickly drawing to an end in our part of the world. We’ve been blessed with unusually hot and sunny weather which means that water sports have been a vital part of the our recent recreational activities.

For the most part, water and cameras don’t mix well. But by taking a few precautions, you can minimize any danger to your camera at the pool or beach when capturing the fun. And if you’re a serious outdoor fanatic, you can make a waterproof camera part of your photo gear.
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