Yesterday I spent a wonderful afternoon in the English countryside.  In one sense this is a strange statement to make as I can walk out into the countryside from where I am sitting writing this.  However, the countryside around me is really just quickly eroding green belt – yesterday, however, was the real thing.  For anyone who might read this and is not familiar with England it in parts one of the most crowded countries in the world – yet over 90% of the land mass is rural – which I guess is a way of saying that most of the people live in and around cities and large towns and even the countryside that surrounds these conurbation’s is not really peaceful  as there is always the is the knowledge of a large city nearby.

Yesterday was different, not only is Canon’s Ashby miles from a large city it is also chocolate box perfect – especially in the glorious spring light.  There is something really uplifting of just standing in the spring light and letting it wash away all the winter darkness.  To top everything we were visiting a National Trust property, which just adds a thick icing to the English cake.  Suddenly the multi cultural, multi facetted complexities of modern England disappeared.  This really was a UKIP supporter’s view of how England should be and of cause it was a fantasy.

Talking of fantasy brings me to the point of this blog – the usefulness of the Pano function on the iPhone when it comes to making a photographic image.  The two images above show what I mean.  The first image was made by the traditional method, i.e. letting Photoshop stitch two or three images together and then spending time to get the blending and lighting just so.  The second is a Pano which is almost as it came out of the iPhone.  Now if we disregard whether I should have made a better job on the original set of images for Photoshop stitch, which is a valid criticism, the time to create this image is out of all proportion to the benefits when compared what the iPhone can produce in camera.   This comes with the added advantage of being able to reshoot immediately should it be required.

So what is the lesson I have learnt from this?  Well first take more time when capturing images for a Photoshop stitch.  Which is all well and good if I haven’t got my iPhone available but if I have, use the iPhone – it is just better at producing a great image in camera.  I know that other cameras and phones can make Panos in camera but as I don’t have access to them I can only compare what I have at hand and the iPhone wins hands down.