In article
>Probably I could get out my optics text and figure this out,
>but... I'll ask on the net instead.
>In Bryce Canyon, I took a nine frame panoramic shot (by panning) with
>a 28mm lens; the frames are tightly grouped so that I can splice them
>together in mid frame (not edge-to-edge), and I used the same
>(manually locked) exposure for all of the frames. The problem
>is... how do I compute the amount to cut off of each picture? Is there
>an undistorted region that I can count on? (The lens is a Minolta MD
>28mmf2.8.) [...]
Actually, some barrel distortion might help with matching horizontal
lines (which will show angles at the print intersections if shot off
-center and rendered straight by the lens), though barrel distortion
would make matching of vertical detail along the print intersections
difficult. (Uh, I trust by "distortion" you are referring to the
off-center bending of straight lines by the lens, and not to the
characteristics of rectangular perspective as shown in a wide
angle-of-view, which is technically not distortion.) There is no
part of any frame (unless it is VERY small, as in a slit moved
across curved film, which is how swing-lens panorama cameras make
similar photos without the "breaks") which will produce a perfectly
smooth transition from print to print, but the smaller the vertical
photo strips are, the closer the image will approximate a swing-lens
camera image. As you assemble the prints, it is fairly easy to match
vertical details reasonably well without actually figuring out
mathematically how much to cut from each photo (and there
are too many variables to do that easily, anyway...[um,
I just noticed that you are in mathematics...;-]).
Hope This Helps