Once again, agreed. I generally use the 2nd approach as well. A downside of that approach is that you can end up with tonal differences in the panels after tonemapping that can he difficult to even out in the stitching process.
Hi Bob,
But the opposite can also be the case.
In the following image (not an HDR), which is too small to really appreciate the frozen misty surroundings, the wide angle of view ranged from (at the left) frontal lighting by the rising sun behind me, to (at the right) a backlit surrounding while looking right into the sun. The color balance of the original tiles showed a much greater shift in color from blue to yellow/orange.
However, I toned down the amount of color temperature shift by gradually warming up the look of the tiles at the left, but not to the extent that the natural shift in colors would be lost (it was freezing). At this small size, the shift is still significant, but less so at a large output size. I also balanced the exposure levels from front lit to back lit to have a better rendering across the FOV.
(http://bvdwolf.home.xs4all.nl/temp/OPF/615-617_S1.jpg)
I use AutoPano which generally does a pretty good job. But I have had the odd instance where there were some odd things happening at the seams.
I tend to use a liberal amount of tile overlap, up to 50%, when I expect to need the blending engine of the stitcher to make smoother transitions. Some blending engines, like SmartBlend in this case, allow to tweak their behavior for smooth gradients.
Cheers,
Bart