has anyone successfully made second level panorama

[robertburkhalter]

Hi,
I'm thinking of buying one of those 500 dollar manfrotto panoheads. What I'm wondering is: after I've adjusted things so my camera rotates around the nodal point of the lens (in all planes), and I've leveled the tripod, can I take a series of shots (say 3 horizontally), then tilt the camera upwards and take three more horizontally? The idea is to make a picture composed of 3 frames wide by 2 frames high. Or, even with the manfrotto and proper adjustments, will the stitching software supplied by Canon be hopelessly befuddled? Or will it all fit seamlessly together without parallax because of the manfrotto?

Thanks for your feedback.

[Peter_Phelan]

Robert,

I have just bought the Manfrotto 303Plus head since I only want to do cylindrical panoramas. You'll need their 303SPH Multi Row head to do what you require; this allows you to shoot complete multi-row cubic panos.

Incidently I also bought the 190 Pro tripod and seperate levelling column; makes a nice complete "pano" setup <s>

Peter

[Paul_F_Caldwell]

I think you posted this also the 1ds forum, but

Make sure you check out the www.outbackphoto.com stitching forum. lots of info there.

A few points,

Don't even worry about the canon software. There are many others on the market that will work better. Best I have seen is the realvis, but it's just too high currently.

My solution for physical gear, changes from time to time, but currently:

I use either a Gitzo explorer, with a Bogen 755 B leveling base, then a RRS BH-55 with a RRS pamorama clamp.

Or the Bogen 3443 carbon 1 with the Bogen Leveling base for the carbon 1 series. Same ballhead.

It's very important to make sure your base is level, and don't confuse this with the ballhead being level. The ballhead must rotate around the base, thus if the base is not level, your pan's won't be either.

Leveling a tripod is a hard to do, harder than most think especially in the outdoors. Having a leveling base just makes it a simple thing to do.

Consider shift lenses or shift adapters, ton of stuff on the outback site and on the 1ds site on Rob's site. Zoerk's PSA is a good place to start.

The nodal point is not that big a deal unless you are panning with objects up close and distant. Net, if you are shooting a pan of the Grand Canyon, the nodal point is not as important, at least in my thinking, as if you are shooting some of the stuff I shoot, where I have subject matter from 5 feet to infinity to worry about.

Paul Caldwell
www.photosofarkansas.com

[TerryWedd]

One of my students has done a 3 level pan of church interiors. According to him you need to vertically offset in the opposite direction to the tilt, ie tilt down and move tripod head up. Sorry, can't be any more specific.

Software being used is called either Stitch or Stitcher, it's French and expensive US580, in conjunction with Quicktime.

Cheers,

Terry

PS found the link http://www.realviz.com/products/st/

[ScottRowed]

The best software is Panorama Tools using one of the GUI's to make it easier - PTGui, PTAssember, or PTMac.

I use PTGui, but I'd look seriously at the package deal of PTAssember with the Panosaurus head.

http://www.tawbaware.com/ptasmblr.htm

http://gregwired.com/pano/Pano.htm

The panorama head I'm currently using is a homemade rig using plywood and aluminum angle bars. It's simple, lightweight and does the job well. Frankly, the Manfrotto heads just seem to be thrown together by whatever spare parts they already had in production. I find them heavy and awkward to use.

I've found I can level the tripod just as fast as using a levelling base and that click stops are not necessary.

I tried RealViz Stitcher. It's nice in concept, but it won't stitch fisheye images and has trouble with ultrawide rectilinear lenses such as the Nikon 12-24. I also think it would likely be fooled by things that move between the frames, such as wind in trees, people, cars and shadows. Panorama Tools uses manual control points instead of automatic pattern recognition and doesn't have those problems.

Scott

[BruceWatson]

Let me second Scott' advice.

The PTAssembler front end for PTtools and a Panosaurus head work well. Good software is probably more important than the hardware!

The Panosaurus head is effective for the price, but has a limited weight capacity. Good way to test the waters and has certainly worked well for me, but I would not mount a heavy telephoto and my 10D on it.

Panoramas are a great add on to my enjoyment of the hobby and I find myself picking destinations for trips based on the possiblities of pano shots.

Cheers,

Bruce