Aruba trip pictures (with panoramas)

I have put up the travel pictures from my early February trip to Aruba. 58
pictures from all over the island. Includes a half dozen panoramas ranging
from two images to a 360 degree one made with 22 images stitched together.

All pictures have captions, though some of them have questions. Help
answering them would be appreciated.

http://donwiss.com/pictures/AUA-2005/

Note to rec.photo.digital readers:

Pictures taken with a Nikon 8400. For ease of transfer to the web, they
were taken in VGA resolution. Minimal cropping. Compression is Fine (parade
pictures are in Normal and heavily cropped). Pictures used in panoramas
were taken in Extra compression. PTGui was used to stitch the panoramas. It
does take some time to set all the control points. I did try Panorama
Factory on one set, but I ended up with a wavy horizon and saw no way to
fix it. PTGui's horizons are perfect.

The panorama scene mode in the 8400 was useful. It manages the necessary
exposure lock and shows a superimposed image of the prior picture to help
in lining up the next.

Snow/Beaches scene mode was used when on a beach. Dawn/dusk mode for last
four pictures.

Don www.donwiss.com (e-mail link on picture page bottoms).