70-200 F2.8 and pan stitching

<p>If you use the 70-200 2.8 to do panorama stitching and you use the tripod color (on 40D). Do you still need to use a nodal slide to move the camera back or is the camera properly centered?</p>

<p>I think the answer has to be that you need a nodal slide. It would be unlikely that the nodal points would stay in one position as the lens was zoomed.</p>

<p>Of course they may be "close enough", depending on what you need, and there may be a zoom setting at which the tripod mount is in close to the correct position.</p>

<p>I don't use one, even without a tripod collar. I've neven seen one until I just googled it. I think the most important part of pana stitching is to be sure the tripod is level (not the camera, but the actual tripod base). This way when you turn side to side the camera stays on even plane. If the tripod isn't level, the camera will turn at that angle, even if the camera itself is level it will gradually tilt up or down if the tripod base isn't level.</p>

<p>It depends on whether or not your image includes subjects at greatly varying distances, especially if very close objects are included. If not, you can get away without worrying about centering on the nodal point. If yes, you may want to worry...</p>

<p>G Dan Mitchell hit it on the head. For distant objects, the nodal point or irrelevant. However if you are trying to stitch near objects or a combination of near/far objects, then it begins to matter. </p>

<p>I've had some very usable panos from hand-holding and stitching with Huggin, for very demandingsituations I should think that a pano head may be needed.</p>

<p>What Craig said. If you can 'plan' your pano so that any 'close' objects do not span multiple frames, then you really do not have to worry about a nodal rail. much more important to have a solid support for the camera and manual control of all exposure parameters. Also check out better software such as Autopano Pro</p>

<p>The "planning" point is a good one, indeed. When I shoot one (not using a dedicated pano head on my tripod) if I do see a potential problem I compose the component images so that the "problem" will be entirely contained within one frame, thus not being a problem at all. This doesn't necessarily always work and if panos are your bread and butter you probably want to invest in specialized equipment.</p>

<p>Also, while people often recommend a variety of third-party apps for stitching - some of which I've tried in the past - Photoshop's built-in stitching capability really does an excellent job in almost all cases, at least with horizontal panos that include only one row of images. I virtually never have a pano that it cannot handle well.</p>

<p>Dan</p>

<p>I love it when people don't answer the question but question the need for it to be answered!</p>

<p>Anyway, Kevin, I only have the 70-200 2.8 IS so the non IS will probably be different and as you can see I was being rained on so only got the measurement at 70mm. To me it looks like it is about 19mm in front of the lenses tripod mount ring. If you like, and the weather is better, I'll measure the 200mm tomorrow. If you have a specific focal length in mind I'll do that for you as well.</p><div></div>

<p>Well I had another look today, the results are very interesting. The three images below show the lens tripod ring does line up with the entry/nodal point at around 110mm focal length, so if that focal length is workable then it will give you parallax free images with just the factory mount. At 200mm the entry/nodal point is very far behind the tripod collar, around 89mm. I put the camera in portrait mode so you could see the zoom setting.</p>

<p>Hope this helps, Scott.</p><div></div>

<p>Scott, I just ran across this old thread but it is spot on for what I am looking for. I am going out west soon and I am going to use my Canon 70 - 200 MM L IS USM lens with and without a 1.4x extender as my primary lens on my CANON 7D and GigaPan Pro for my Panoramic. I won't use my lens collar because the camera slides into the GigaPan with an arcaswiss l-bracket to a RRS rail. I can gauge my settings based upon the photos you provided (thanks). Have you done any tests with the 1.4 or 2.0 extenders attached to the 70 - 200mm?</p>

<p>Hi there Timothy,</p>

<p>I have the 2x TC MkII, on the 70-200 f2.8 IS it is a real disappointment, there is another guy here William W, who has/had a 70-200 f2.8 non IS and he gets really good results with his, he swears by the combo and actually has a gallery of images here shot with it. </p>

<p>I also have the 1.4 TC MkIII, the results from this are much better, and in my opinion it is well worth getting. But I'd do a quick test of your own personal gear, there ends up being very little difference between IQ lost to the TC or just re-sampling a smaller picture with just the lens up to match.</p>

<p>Have a play at this link, this is for the 70-200 vs the 70-200 with 1.4TC MkII.<br>

http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx?Lens=103&Camera=453&Sample=0&FLI=4&API=4&LensComp=103&CameraComp=453&SampleComp=0&FLIComp=5&APIComp=4</p>