[shuttertalk]

If you're like me, then the difficulty of taking an acceptable group shot seems to increase proportionally with the number of people in it. If there's children or babies, multiply the difficulty by a factor of 3. There's always someone who's got their eyes closed, or is scratching their nose, or just plain not looking...

I always make it a point to take at least 3 or more shots when there's a large group, and if I'm doing one of those self timer things on a tripod, I also sneak in a few shots in between takes and while setting up.

Amazingly, the cool people at Microsoft Research have created this utility called "Group Shot" - "MSR Group Shot helps you create a perfect group photo out of a series of group photos. With Group Shot you can select your favorite parts in each shot of the series and Group Shot will automatically build a composite image."

I think it's pretty cool - obviously it works better if the images you use are similar to each other - say if you took a few shots from the same position. They even use it to get rid of distracting elements!

See a demo/tutorial here:
http://research.microsoft.com/projects/G...otHelp.htm

Download here:
http://research.microsoft.com/projects/GroupShot/

[adam]

That looks amazing!