Panorama

Depends on camera but film/sensor sizes are fixed so I suspect that it's cropping. If so, I'd prefer to do it my self. I crop my wife stitches. Stitching takes more time but you end up with a larger image. Remember, if you stitch set everything manually (aperture, shutter, white balance. ISO).

just learn to do it yourself if you're vaguely serious about panoramas. there are quite a few techno details and satisfaction w/ a well done pano.

camera on full manual (inc white balance); level (pref. on a tripod), overlap at least 50% per frame

Automode in some camera give you a frame to line-up. For hand held Pano it does help some, especially when one use the zoom to frame. It can help reduce metering and framing mistakes. On the newer Sony, auto mode shoots a lots of frames automatically to improve result and stitch it at the camera. It save time in sorting and post-editing.

I like to do panorama manually. Overlap frames by 33% works for me. Level tripod and camera. Do few passes to see how everything aligns than shoot.
I use Photoshop to put the image together for me. It will align the frames and blend them nicely, all you have to do is to crop it and your done. See my portfolio here I have few panoramas there.

Well, there are two basic methods. One is to use the camera's panorama mode (depending on your camera), which guides you on overlap and positioning the shots using the screen. Typically it also locks the camera settings so all of your pictures that you're going to put in the panorama have the same exposure. Then you can either merge them in-camera into a panorama, or use Photoshop's excellent auto-panorama tool.

The other extreme is to break out the tripod, ball head, leveling base, and nodal rail (all basically part of the tripod setup) and then put your camera on top, set all the camera settings to full manual (so that there are no 'automatic' settings that will change from shot to shot), shoot the images, and then stitch them together by hand in Photoshop or other software. This method is more work and more expensive (if you don't have the ~$1,000 to $2,000 of tripod gear), but is favored by the pros for the precision it affords.

Personally, I have shot several great panoramas using the first method. For example, here is a 180-degree panorama I shot at a viewpoint on the Sea-to-Sky highway that runs from Vancouver, British Columbia up to Whistler. It was about 8 or 10 pictures stitched together on a 4 megapixel Canon Powershot point and shoot - I personally would have no problem making a large print of this image.

Full size jpg link so you can see the detail (6.6 megabytes!)

For stitching, I use Microsoft Ice. It's freeware and really easy to use. Just select the shots you want to stitch together from your folder, drop them onto the workspace and it automatically stitches and blends them.

For shooting the panos, all of the above is good advice, but I would mention that if you orient the camera in the opposite direction of motion (i.e. if shooting left to right, orient the camera in vertical position) so that you get less of the "long and skinny" effect.

Use of a tripod is definitely helpful, but to be honest, I rarely use one. I just try to make sure that I use a nice, fluid motion and concentrate on keeping the camera as level as possible. Definitely set the camera in manual so that the exposure doesn't change between shots. I usually meter the brightest part of the scene and set that exposure in manual.

Well, although I bought the Nikon Panorama head AP-2 shown on another post link [scroll down]), actually all my recent panoramas have also been hand held. I haven't even worried all that much about exposure, but setting that manually is probably a good idea. Just overlap a bunch as you shoot and swivel your upper body without moving your feet, and get to the obscure File>Automate>Photomerge sequence in Photoshop. Once you find it, it's fairly easy to let it do its automatic thing.

Here's a hand-held example

I hand hold all of my stitched panoramas. Just keep the shots as level as you can - it is nice to shoot them vertically if you pan horizontally (and vice versa) although you will have to shoot more frames to cover the same area. Also tr to keep the lens stationary in space if you can, it helps avoid alignment problems later on.

There are lots of free pano stitch tools out there, autostitch an hugin are two.

If you ever plan on printing, it's helpful to choose a standard ratio or two (eg 1:3 or 1:4) to make framing and swapping images a little easier.