Check out Microsoft’s Zoom.it, a great way to turn your high resolution images into an interactive google-maps like widget!
Here are two zoom-it’s I made with flickr photos. Use your mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out, and you can pan around with your cursor. Or use the overlay-controls in the bottom right to zoom in and out or even go fullscreen.
Visit zoom.it if you’d like to create your own, just give it the url of a photo and let it do its thing.
Ever wanted to create a panoramic photo? The beauty of panoramic shots is that you can capture a really wide view, great for nature photos, and architecture. Several new cameras (and some older ones) make it really easy by doing all the work for you. All you have to do is take a few photos while panning the camera horizontally or vertically, and the camera will automatically stitch them together to form a beautiful wide or tall panorama.
Many cameras have a panoramic mode, but only some perform the stitching in camera for you, instead of requiring you to run some software on your computer. In fact, there is a group dedicated to in-camera stitched panoramic photos on flickr.
Boston Skyline by soelin, using a new mirrorless Sony NEX-5. The Sony NEX-3 also does in-camera panoramas.
185˚ Panoramic lobby by Debs (ò‿ó)♪, using a Sony DSC-TX5.
Cph lakes panorama by extractor2000. Taken with a Sony DSC-HX5v.
sea panorama by blumblaum. Taken with a Fujifilm S1000fd.
montblanc by mako10. Taken with a waterproof Pentax W80, presumably the newer W90 also does automatic panoramic photos.
Dusk by heiwa4126. Taken with a Kodak V705, an older camera known for its dual lens system, seems to be very popular for panoramic photos!
Bridge Under The Freeway also by heiwa4126. Taken with a Kodak V705
Following are some photos that caught my eye, especially since they were taken with a tiny point and shoot rather than a big DSLR.
Ghosts by alexbrn. The color and light in this photo are really unique, nice eye to catch that.
Heaven by aurélien. Concerts present a challenge because they’re so dark, but the lighting is also an opportunity for photos like this. The photographer took the shot at 1/40s (almost as slow as you’d want to go hand-held), risking blur, and even with a slow shutter speed like that needed to use a relatively wide aperture of f/2.8 and higher than normal ISO of 500 to get a good exposure.
New Grass by koocbor. Notice how only the grass in the front is in focus, and everything in the background is blurred. The photographer achieved this narrow depth of field using two techniques: a wide aperture of f/2.0 (only available on a few cameras), and by getting close to his subject while keeping the background distant.
Escalator by tetradtx. The perspective in this photo really draws you in. Again, another low light shot, taken without a flash. The photographer used a wide aperture again of f/2.0, and a slow shutter speed of 1/30s to get a good exposure. The photo is very sharp, impressive if they didn’t use a tripod. The shot was taken at 28mm, which although isn’t as wide as some cameras is still fairly wide and is responsible for creating the wide-angle perspective you see.
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The Lumix DMC-ZS3 from Panasonic (aka the DMC-TS7 in Europe) is one of the most popular cameras at Snapsort, and for good reason: very few camera’s its size have as much zoom (12x) while still having a good wide-angle lens (25mm), let alone also do 720p HD video and overall great pictures.
Here are some great photos taken by Wonker at concerts. Taking good photos at a concert is one of the most challenging tasks for a camera because you’re often far away from the performer, there isn’t much light, and to get an awesome shot you have to turn off the flash so you capture the mood and lighting of the even.
This shot (above) was taken at 25mm (you can’t really go wider with a point and shoot, some do 24mm which is only slightly wider), and really puts the concert in context, I love the curve of the dome above which seems to frame the stadium below.
To be able to take a good photo in the dark like this, the photographer used ISO 800 and the f/3.3 (the fastest aperture the camera shoots), and 1/20s shutter speed, probably the minimum shutter he could use without introducing blur from camera shake. The ZS3 seems to do a decent job at ISO 800, if he’d left it at ISO 100, his shutter would have been 0.4s, which would have required a tripod.
Here the photographer got up nice and close using 200mm (about 8x zoom). If you only had a 3x or 5x zoom you couldn’t get a shot like this (unless you were really close to the action!)
From the same concert as the shot above, this time using a high ISO again to make sure he avoids blur from camera shake.
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