What Pano Head?

<p>I've been wanting to take a stab at Photomerge in Photoshop. To that end, I'd like to string vertical images together horizontally to create panos, like this (scroll down):</p>

<p><a href="http://www.secondpicture.com/tutorials/photography/panorama_photographing_and_photoshop_photomerge.html">http://www.secondpicture.com/tutorials/photography/panorama_photographing_and_photoshop_photomerge.html</a></p>

<p>I'd be using a D700 and would need a pano head that would hold the camera lens parallel to the ground without the camera slipping and ruining the horizon line, while the camera was in the vertical position. Thoughts?</p>

<p>NodalNinja 5 plus their rotator and you are in business. Very sturdy and reasonably priced compared to the competition.</p>

<a href= "http://www.stereoscopy.com/jasper/panorama.html">Jasper Engineering</a>, a one man shop that makes

superb pano heads. Ask about Pano Head 3...

you dont need a special head made for panoramas, a standard ball head will work fine, I do it all time

ross

<p>Ross, I have a Bogen/Manfroto Junior Geared Head, which is swell if the camera is sitting in the horizontal position. However, if the camera is turned vertical, there's no catch on the camera plate to keep the camera from from nosing down slightly- particularly with a heavier lens.</p>

>>> you dont need a special head made for panoramas,

 

That depends on what kind of panos you want to do, the relationship between foreground/background objects and your

position, and how fussy you are. I've done panos freehand with a point and shoot, but wouldn't necessarily recommend that

without knowing more about a persons' objectives.

<p>Your immediate problem is that the camera slips (turns) on the mounting screw when you tip the head 90 degrees. You can probably attach a plastic lip to the QR plate which will prevent this from happening. Spare plates are not expensive, in case you need one for other cameras.</p>

<p>You also need a way to make sure the head rotates about a perfectly vertical axis (so the horizon doesn't tilt or slip). It's possible to adjust the legs to achieve pretty good level, but it takes a lot of time to do a good job. Better to have a leveling platform that fits between the column and the head - a ball joint with about 7 degrees of freedom (you can eyeball the tripod legs to within a couple of degrees in a few seconds). Manfrotto and Acratech make suitable devices.</p>

<p>Finally, you need some way to back up the camera so that the axis of rotation is coincident with the frontal node of the lens. That eliminates parallax between nearby (< 75') objects and things further away. This is usually done with a slider device that goes between the camera and head. This is hard to do with your present hardware without creating a Rube Goldberg array of this and that.</p>

<p>Switching to Arca-Swiss type QR simplifies nearly everything you're trying to do. Fitted plates prevent rotation and are thin enough to stay on the camera. You can (recommended) then get an L-plate which allows you to use either position, yet keep the lens centered over the head (and can stay on the camera). You would then mount an Arca type clamp on a spare QR plate to fit your geared head.</p>

<p>A so-called "nodal plate" can then be as simple as a long Arca plate with a small Arca clamp at one end. This slides back and forth in the clamp on the head itself, and can double as a focusing rail for closeups.</p>

<p>Check out the RRS webpage for ideas (and pricing) - <a href="http://www.reallyrightstuff.com">www.reallyrightstuff.com</a>. It's not cheap if you buy everything at once (you can phase your purchases), but you won't regret it.</p>

<p>In the mean time, you can often do a good enough job even without a tripod. Try to keep the horizon lined up in the viewfinder, and shoot for a 25% overlap between framea. You can always line things up in Photoshop (PTGui is a lot better), at the expense of cropping away the misaligned edges of the stitched image.</p>

<p>One thing you don't need is a degree dial. For one thing, it's hard to figure out how many degrees a zoom lens needs. All that's really necessary is to get a 25% overlap between frames to allow some wiggle room when blending the images.</p>

<p>To do that, identify some landmark 25% from the edge of the finder in the direction you're panning. In the next shot, put that landmark 25% from the opposite edge - bingo!</p>