Just a very very quick test.
Literally, as I was cooking dinner at the time. Grabbed camera, spent 5 mins trying to remember how to adjust aperture in full manual, went out back and took 7 shots.
Now whilst avoiding washing up, I installed and pretty much followed the buttons/instructions...opened the images...aligned...(click the image a couple of times trying to figure out how to zoom in or things and ended up needing to realign everything!) and saved. Cropped the edges back and hey presto:
(7 photos stitched above)
Needless to say I am impressed. Even though I havent a clue how to use hugin beyond the basic automatic default stuff, it seems to do a much better job at aligning than photoshop, even if it does take 5x as long to do it.
Now all I have to do is take my time taking decent shots at the right exposure etc. I guess having them in raw format will give me some freedom for when i get back changing exposure etc.
Thanks for the help guys, I was worried Id go up to the lakes and waste the whole week taking crappy shots (probably still will) but now at least I am armed with a little knowledge on how to improve them a little!