Stitch Assist

Wes and I have been lamenting about our digital camera recently. We had a really nice Canon that we loved for about 3 years. It was one of the big cameras with a high-quality zoom, and it took truly beautiful pictures. When it broke (ie. Liz accidentally dropped it on the floor), we replaced it with a much more compact Canon -- the PowerShot SD1100 IS. It was well-reviewed on CNET and by many users. Unfortunately, Wes and I have not had the same results. As you can see from some recent pictures of Lucy and the baby's room, indoor pictures, especially shot at night under fluorescent lighting, come out really badly. Wes is, naturally, concerned about this, as he anticipates taking many baby pictures this fall. I told him I would sit down and read the book and play with the camera to really make sure we're using it to its full capacity before we try and ebay it and buy a new one more like the old one. Specs wise, this camera surpasses the old one. It's zoom is lower, but for most the pictures we're having problems with, we aren't even using the zoom. When I use the auto setting, the subject is way too bright and the background really dark. Indoor and outdoor pictures under natural light seem okay, but not quite as sharp as with our old camera. Like the colors aren't as vibrant or something. I did "discover" a bunch of settings I didn't know were there before, including one for indoor picture taking that seems to help with the light/dark issue. I don't like that I would have to change the settings so much instead of being to rely on auto, but at least I know there's some options there to try out before giving up hope.

Anyhow, the picture above -- of our newly arranged living room thanks to baby -- was taken with the stitch assist function on the camera. The camera helps you line up subsequent shots to match the one previous, and then a computer program puts them together. Obviously there's some stretching at the seams to make it all match up, but it's still pretty cool. We've decided to take the camera to Philly this weekend for my BIL's wedding and just take tons of pictures to try and really assess if it's the users or the camera that has problems. Perhaps I'll post some comparison pictures and a poll to see what objective viewers think.