Panorama photos

Back in February I posted about the difficulty of finding a good free program to create panorama photos. I use Serif Panorama Plus, which does the job of stitching several pics together very nicely, but it is a paid program. However, I have just come across an updated version of http://www.image-editor.net/Pos-Panorama-Pro-Panoramic-Image-Software.asp?RefName=PosPanoramaPro1.00, which used to be commercial but has now been turned into a free program. Having given it a quick trial, I can thoroughly recommend it. In fact it has a very good feature missing in Serif Panorama - the ability to create vertical panoramas. It also allows greater control over the way in which the pics are combined, and the resolution of the end product. I think I will be switching permanently.
Incidentally, did you realise that the average digital camera has a wide-angle lens? In the old days of film cameras, the average lens had a focal length of 50mm, so the resulting photograph was pretty close to how the eye sees things. But most digital cameras are more like 35mm. This means that you are getting a horizontally compressed photograph which is not true to life. To bring things back to better perspective, I suggest trimming either the top, bottom or both of the photo, which will give a semi-panorama anyway.