Panorama question

[Dmitri]

I did my first panorama tonight, and while its boring I'm kinda proud of it. BUT how come it curves towards the sides? I used a tripod, I'm fairly certain it was level (has a level in it) and I was careful not to hit the tripod. Is this just something that happens, or is there something to watch out for to keep straight lines?

Any other C&C welcome as well.

 

[astrostu]

Are you talking about how the blue/black tree boundary on the right (for example) bows downwards? If so, I found that to be an issue when I was doing manual panorama-ing myself. Since then, I've moved on to pretty high-quality panorama stitching software and I have not seen that effect in my shots since.

I would *guess* that it's due to a lens/perspective distortion that happens on shots like this but that the stitching software re-projects each image onto a sphere (or cylinder - user-selectable) in order to correct for it.

 

[Dwig]

...Is this just something that happens, or is there something to watch out for to keep straight lines?...

What straight lines??

If you look carefully, the trees in the center are smaller than the trees on the right meaning the right hand water line is closer to the camera and NOT a horizon line. It is perfectly natural for the water line to be lower in the image just as the line of the top of the trees gets higher.