[David M]

All digital panoramic cameras do is reduce the vertical element of the frame which means you end up getting fewer total pixels. As was stated, take two or more pictures and stitch them together with good photo editing software and crop as necessary. Photoshop Elements is good enough. You get more pixels this way and the panoramic shape you desire. You are not limited to the cameras frame ratio. Use the same exposure for all the shots so one is not darker than the other. You will have to take the camera out of Auto-exposure to do this. Keep the focus at infinity ideally or if close then a fixed focal distance that you do not change. Use full resolution and not a compressed file format. Use a tripod that is perfectly level and swing the camera on the tripod first to make sure you are not swinging the camera up or down through the sequence. Increase the exposure time a little to make sure you are getting good depth of field and sharpness. You can do this since you are not holding the camera. Do it a few times of the same subject at different exposures so you can pick and choose from the best sequence. For images that contain sky, consider a polarizer in order to get that nice deep blue but don't turn the polarizer after you have taken the first shot in the sequence. An SLR will work better but you can still do it with a pocket sized point and shoot. Get as many pixels as you can afford...you cant have too many pixels for something like this because can always go down in resolution but you cannot go up with your final print. 10 megapixels is probably overkill unless you have the bucks and 4 megapixels is probably not enough for what you are doing.


I did one of Yosemite last winter from Glacier Point. It took about an hour to do it with my wife tapping her feet, but it turned out real nice.

Have fun with it.