Suggest a Lens for use with RRS Panoramic Gimbal to Make Awesome Landscape Panos

<p>Consider that perhaps it's not so much about the lens per se as the location for successful panoramas. Sweeping across a large vista isn't always going to give an interesting photograph and the distortions can be ugly. Just saying give more thought to the location and the process than the hardware.</p>

<p>And if you're not planning on printing and selling the pictures you could save a lot of money and effort by getting a Sony camera with its "sweep panorama" setting, makes it all a breeze and perfectly okay for web or monitor viewing.</p>

<p>Just thinking outside the box here not trying to ruffle feathers.</p>

<p>As a generalisation it's probably best to avoid the ultra wides when stitching, but you've still got to match the focal length to the required scenic result so there isn't a single lens that will do the lot. Well maybe an 18-200mm would do most of the time but you may not be satisfied with the lens quality so back to the drawing board. Oh and shoot vertically (the camera) i.e in portrait mode if you're doing wide views, those narrow slit panoramas are non too attractive after a while. (Personal opinion not a rule)</p>

<p>OP: Choose a focal length which gives you the vertical coverage that makes the most sense for the scene. Avoid including too much sky or foreground unless they constitute a significant part of the composition. The horizontal field of view doesn't matter, since you will be stitching as many frames as needed for that. Rather than use a wide angle lens, you can also turn the camera and use the vertical aspect, and gain resolution in the process. A good stitching program will handle the seams invisibly.</p>

<p>The lens I use most frequently is a 28-70/2.8 zoom, usually toward the longer end of the range unless I'm really close to something tall (or deep), like a lake in front of a mountain peak, and I want to get it all. In this example, the lens was set at 62 mm with the body turned vertically for added resolution.</p>

<p><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17901443-lg.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="250" /></p>

<p>If you level the camera on two axes, the horizon will be in the center. If you want a better composition, tilt the camera up or down while leveling it horizontally. This will default to a curved panorama, which can be straightened by adjusting the center point in a program like PTGui. Photoshop, I'm afraid, isn't up to that task without a lot of manual effort.</p>

<p>Finding the nodal point is easy, and necessary if there are nearby objects which may ghost otherwise. Swing the lens from side to side and adjust the nodal slide until the foreground object doesn't move against the background. Nikon f/2.8 zoom lenses don't seem to shift much when the focal length is changed. It was not necessary in the photo above. In fact, I didn't use a nodal slide at all.</p>

<p>Just to make things interesting, each of the six shots was taken as a seven frame HDR.</p>

<p>A gimbal head is not your best choice for doing panoramics. Your best choice is a head that is designed for panoramic shots but if you don't want to spring for that, the next best choice is a 3 axis head with spirit levels to level the head. They quickest way to get a "scalloped" image in PS with panoramics is to have your camera not level. A very easy and inexpensive way to overcome this is to get a 3 axis spirit level that slides into the camera hotshoe. I use the spirit levels on my Manfrotto head to get in the ballpark but use the three axis one in the hotshoe to fine tune the camera before each shot. When I stitch all the images together in PhotoMerge, I get very little wasted space at the top and bottom of the final image.</p>

<p>The best lens to use for panoramic images is in the 50 - 85mm (FX) range. It will mean that you will have to stitch more images together, no big deal, but you not have issues with perspective distortion.</p>