Canon Powershot lenses on Ebay

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

"Russ Reid" <ns.russ.reid@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:42b07216$0$302$cc9e4d1f@news-text.dial.pipex.com...
> Does anyone have experience (good OR bad) of buying lenses for the Canon
> Powershot range on Ebay? I'm interested in panoramic photography and there
> are kits on Ebay which supposedly give you 180° pictures compared with the
> 80-ish degrees I think the standard Canon wide angle adaptor gives.
>

Why not look into doing panoramas with what you already have. There is some
excellent software available which will do a good job of stitching photos
together.

Start here ...

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html

This is the best I have seen. Take a close look at the gallery.

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

In article <11b10fl4ep79830@corp.supernews.com>,
Rudy Benner <newsgroups@rudybenner.com> wrote:
>
>Why not look into doing panoramas with what you already have. There is some
>excellent software available which will do a good job of stitching photos
>together.

Not to mention that [some of? all of?] the PowerShots have a panorama
setting that makes it easy to align your overlapping photos. (Although
I can see where you might need to clean up the merges with software,
especially if the camera wasn't on a tripod when you took the photos.)



Patty

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

That's fantastic! Thanks very much.
"Rudy Benner" <newsgroups@rudybenner.com> wrote in message
news:11b10fl4ep79830@corp.supernews.com...
>
> "Russ Reid" <ns.russ.reid@btinternet.com> wrote in message
> news:42b07216$0$302$cc9e4d1f@news-text.dial.pipex.com...
>> Does anyone have experience (good OR bad) of buying lenses for the Canon
>> Powershot range on Ebay? I'm interested in panoramic photography and
>> there are kits on Ebay which supposedly give you 180° pictures compared
>> with the 80-ish degrees I think the standard Canon wide angle adaptor
>> gives.
>>
>
> Why not look into doing panoramas with what you already have. There is
> some excellent software available which will do a good job of stitching
> photos together.
>
> Start here ...
>
> http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html
>
> This is the best I have seen. Take a close look at the gallery.
>

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

I have a lot of fun with it. Shoot landscapes but hold the camera in
portrait configuration. Lots of overlap, you get fantastic detail. Manual
mode with manual focus seems to help thing along nicely as far as getting
things matched up, although Autostitch does a great job of matching things.
Try doing some matrix projects, like 5x3 landscape, The webpage for
Autostitch details some of these.

Have fun.

"Russ Reid" <ns.russ.reid@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:42b091d4$0$290$cc9e4d1f@news-text.dial.pipex.com...
> That's fantastic! Thanks very much.
> "Rudy Benner" <newsgroups@rudybenner.com> wrote in message
> news:11b10fl4ep79830@corp.supernews.com...
>>
>> "Russ Reid" <ns.russ.reid@btinternet.com> wrote in message
>> news:42b07216$0$302$cc9e4d1f@news-text.dial.pipex.com...
>>> Does anyone have experience (good OR bad) of buying lenses for the Canon
>>> Powershot range on Ebay? I'm interested in panoramic photography and
>>> there are kits on Ebay which supposedly give you 180° pictures compared
>>> with the 80-ish degrees I think the standard Canon wide angle adaptor
>>> gives.
>>>
>>
>> Why not look into doing panoramas with what you already have. There is
>> some excellent software available which will do a good job of stitching
>> photos together.
>>
>> Start here ...
>>
>> http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html
>>
>> This is the best I have seen. Take a close look at the gallery.
>>
>
>

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

"Russ Reid" <ns.russ.reid@btinternet.com> writes:
> Does anyone have experience (good OR bad) of buying lenses for the
> Canon Powershot range on Ebay?
> I'm interested in panoramic photography and there are kits on Ebay
> which supposedly give you 180° pictures compared with the 80-ish
> degrees I think the standard Canon wide angle adaptor gives.

Most of the secondary lenses and kits for compacts offered on eBay is
garbage. The 0.42x "Wide Angle Macro Fisheye Lens" sold under various
brands - the most common being "Titanium" - is very bad. I haven't
bought one, but I emailed one of the vendors selling for full size
sample pictures, and what I got back was were very soft and with
massive CA.

I've bought two converters on eBay. Samples here:
http://folk.uio.no/gisle/photo/wa.html

The Kenko 0.16x fisheye converter turned out to be useless on the
Powershot G5. It must have some cult following tho', because
somebody mailed me and offered $100 for it after seeing my griping
about it on the above webpage.

The Raynox DCR-720 I'm happy with. The barrel distortion is bad and
makes architecture a major post-processing project, but it is very
handy for "people" shots in tight spaces. The Raynox DCR-6600 Pro
is supposed to be much better distortionwise, but it cost almost
twice as much.

As somebody else has already noted - for panoramas you're
much better off using the "panorama" mode on the Powershot
and stitching using software. Here is some examples:
http://folk.uio.no/gisle/photo/pano.html
--
- gisle hannemyr [ gisle{at}hannemyr.no - http://folk.uio.no/gisle/ ]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kodak DCS460, Canon Powershot G5, Olympus 2020Z
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

Russ and Rudy were thus conversing...
>>>Does anyone have experience (good OR bad) of buying lenses for the Canon
>>>Powershot range on Ebay? I'm interested in panoramic photography and
>>>there are kits on Ebay which supposedly give you 180° pictures compared
>>>with the 80-ish degrees I think the standard Canon wide angle adaptor
>>>gives.
>>>
>>
>>Why not look into doing panoramas with what you already have. There is
>>some excellent software available which will do a good job of stitching
>>photos together.
>>
>>Start here ...
>>
>>http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html
>>
>>This is the best I have seen. Take a close look at the gallery.
>>

I've had a Canon Powershot A60 for three years and just recently
discovered Canon's stitch utility while on a trip to Egypt. Got some
fantastic results.

Autostitch looks like it does even more, matching top and side edges of
photos to stitch them together.

--
****************Ken Browne*********************
clacking the keys in olde Sturbridge village, MA
*** ***


Warning: May contain traces of nuts.