I always see those widescreen, panaramic shots. My question is, how do you take them? Do you need a wide angle lens to do it, or is it a setting on your camera. I have a Canon digital rebel xt. Any input would be appreciated.

I don't own a Rebel XT and have never used one. I do however have a Canon Poweshot A700 and on that there is a Panoramic setting (On the Program Dial). I have used that on many an occassion and it is petty good at what it does. You may want to take a gander at your User Manual ...

I use photomerge in Photoshop (File - Automate - Photomerge)

Works for me with up to 16 images, 26000 by 5000px

it's been a long time since I've done this, but it used to be my main line of business. Apple's quicktime VR toolkit and Panorama Tools by Helmut Dersch are designed to make 360-degree panoramas, but can equally well be used to stitch together pictures with perspective correction etc. Things may well have moved on since I did but those tools used to give quality results.

With a camera such as the Rebel, it is more of a "lens" thing. You need to get a wide-angle lens for that.

Your kit lens will work. Take 2 or 3 shots of the scenery then stitch them together in photoshop.

DoubleTake is a light, cheap program that will stitch images together for you as well. Even has some basic editing and alignment options. It's worked really well for me.

DoubleTake

I have the same camera and I have used it to take a few panoramas.
What you need to make sure is that you are on a tripod and that the dial is set to "M" for manual exposure. That way, you can make sure all the pictures will be exposed the same.



If you use a wide angle lens such as a fish eye lens, you get distortion round the edges that are more difficult to correct and can make the picture more awkward to stick together.

You can use the lens that comes with the camera, it's more than adequate.
Make sure that when you take the pictures, they overlap.

Then it's just a case of stitching them together - I use Photoshop CS3, it makes it quite easy.

EDIT: just found this site, maybe that can help.

You could always pick up the Canon 10-20mm lens, it's a super-wide angle zoom without the fisheye distortion. I believe Sigma makes a cheaper 10-22mm version, but the optical quality isn't as good.

You might find it more cost effective to just stitch them like the other guys said in photoshop though

someone probably mentioned this already, but you could try using a panoramic tripod for more accuracy. It'll look better when your whole photo will be consistant.

thanks for this guys, im actually gonna try this next weekend when i go on a shoot.

Two of my panoramic shots taken with a nikon d50 and 18-55mm lens
stitched together in photoshop using auto-align and auto-blend layers.

TIP. the best thing to remember when taking panoramic shot is to set your exposure to manual mode and set your white balance to Kelvin this will give you a consistent images which you can join using Photoshop's photo merge.

I have done several myself. I usually use Hugin (unfortunately the Mac port is slightly behind at this time), manually picking alignment points, then using Photoshop to blend the layers together and fix any issues.So far the largest I have done is 32MP, but I would like to find a good scene to really have some fun with!Here is one that I did this way this summer. It's a view from a peak at Philmont Scout Ranch. I wish that there had been more time on that trip to take pictures, but I have what I have.The full-size image is about 15MP.

I did a lot of qtvr and panorama 's. and many of them I did with the same camera you have
and just basic lens (coming with a camera ) .so it.s a few things you will need.the basic set for amater use are tripod ( you can also shoot it from hand if the objects are far away from the camera) camera (your is just fine) and software http://www.ptgui.com/ .

Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment

If you're going to stitch them together with photoshop make sure when you take multiple shots you take them over lapping each other about 1/3 the way in otherwise it wont work well at all.

Use photoshop. Photomerge is easy to use and looks great. ill post a panoram i made using photomerge

i have the kodak z712 IS and it has a panaramic mode, it takes 3 pics, and stitches them together... it shows a part of the picture you took so you can line them up again and take another pic. repeat once more and then viola panaramic.

In a Photography qualification I did, I based my project panel around Josef Koudelka's panoramic series called chaos. You can get special 'panoramic' cameras which are specially built for panorama shots, but take a special type of film and are ridiculously expensive.

I had to work in black & white film, and by chance the camera I was using had a special switch that you flicked, that pulled curtains over sections of the film, creating a panoramic effect. You also post process it in the darkroom.

In the digital world however.... Photoshop is your friend

i've been doing a LOT of panoramic shooting lately...

all shot w/ nikon d70s + sigma 10-20; stitched w/ either ptgui or hugin

Omegach
Cool shots, I've seen this done on the interior of the ball, first time i've seen it ontop.

Very nice shots!!! I like the outdoor ones, it makes the houses look like they're perched on tiny planets floating in the sky.