Before I went to bed last Thursday, I set the alarm on my iPhone 4 for 2:55am. This was not because I have a new paper route or decided to follow in my grandfather's footsteps and be a milkman, but because I want to insure I was able to get one of the first preorders in for the new iPhone 5 that here on the coast would be first available at 3am Friday morning. So I rumbled out of bed and began refreshing the iPhone 5 page on apple.com. Another reason to be one of the first was that I had already secured in my buy-back price for my 2-yeard old iPhone 4 on the great site gazelle.com for a whopping $146! That's right, it basically meant that the new iPhone 5 would only be $54 out of pocket, if I could get one before October 1st.
Well, my early rising paid off as my iPhone 5 (white, 16GB, AT&T) was delivered on the first available date (Friday the 21st). It took almost four hours to sync all my backup data to it, so I did not have much opportunity to test the new iOS 6 panorama feature until yesterday (Saturday). I was walking Kiki around Crescent Lake Park, a common Saturday evening activity and with the wide open views from the lakeside, I had my first chance to test the panorama function.
I saw a video of how it works so I knew you do not take five or six separate shots in a row, but rather turn the panorama feature on and then glide the camera over the area you want to photograph. There are visual guides to keep your framing on track, and I must admit I was rather wobbly in my first attempt as you can see in the unedited image above.
Still, there was a large portion of the image that was usable. I cropped out the left, right and bottom edges and found a decent remaining image. The exposure was a little off and there was a lot of noise in the sky, but overall I thought the new panorama feature in iOS 6 on first impression seems to be very usable. I look forward to trying it again with a more steady hand and in different light.
Have you made any panoramas with iOS 6 yet? Post your examples in the comments below.
