Lake Merritt, Oakland

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Lake Merritt, Oakland California
swoo
7/5/2002

I got July 5th off. Unfortunately Theresa had to work. So we decided to meet for lunch. I finally got my chance to eat at Le Cheval (1007 Clay St, Oakland), which is a great Vietnamese restaurant at downtown Oakland. While Theresa went back to work in the afternoon, I decided to walk around Lake Merritt and take some photos with my Nikon Coolpix 5700. Here are some pictures that demonstrate the ease of use, the 8X zoom, the wide-angle, and the macro-close up capabilities of this camera. I am particularly pleased with this 6-frame panorama that was stitched together easily with ArcSoft Panorama Maker version 3.0. I did not use a tripod. Though I did not lock the exposure, ArcSoft Pan aroma Maker did an admirable job of blending the sky and water that had different exposure. Thank goodness :-)

For those who are interested in how I made the Lake Merritt panoramic short. I started with below 6 pictures that I have taken.

What I did right

	By using the electronic view finder I was able to hold the camera steady and level as I pan across the lake
	By reviewing the picture that was just taken in the electronic view finder I was able to remember how much to pan the camera to the right with a good amount of overlap

What I did wrong

	Forgot to lock the exposure. Thankfully, ArcSoft Panorama Maker was able to blend the sky and water. However, Adobe Photoshop Element was not able to blend, and I was too lazy to adjust each picture's exposure manually.
	Can you believe that I forgot to change the lense focal length to wide? These pictures were made at an equivalent focal length of ~88mm!

Here are the 6 individual frames. The first panorama was made with Photoshop Element with blending, and the second one was made with Photoshop Element without blending.