During a recent trip to Death Valley National Park, I often took a step back from my ‘big’ camera and pulled out my phone to make some panoramas. If you want to see the big camera photos, click this – Death Valley 2011. The iPhone panoramas are all linked below – the first set was exported from the amazing Photosynth iPhone app and the second set was stitched using AutoStitch. I wrote about both apps in this post a few months ago.
At first glance, the Photosynth panoramas look weird and terrible. Keep in mind, though, that they are full 360° in all directions and when you constrain it to be a 2D rectangle, things get a little squished. Click the ‘interactive’ link below each image to see it how it was intended. The Dante’s View Photosynth turned out particularly well, in my humble opinion.
The AutoStitch panoramas are much prettier, but of course lack the interactivity and imersiveness (?) of the Photosynths. AutoStitch can handle multiple rows of photos, but in all the cases below I just did a single row. It’s interesting to see what textures and scenes each app could handle gracefully.
Photosynth
Zabriskie Point [interactive]
Dante’s View [interactive]
Racetrack Playa [interactive]
Grandstand [interactive]
Devil’s Golf Course [interactive]
Badwater Basin [interactive]
Eagle Borax Works [interactive]

Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes [interactive]
AutoStitch
If you want to see other sizes (including the original) of any of these, here’s the gallery on SmugMug – Death Valley iPhoneography. It’s your reward for making it to the bottom.




