Panoramic equipment - leveling base vs. panning clamp

[Edsport]

Are we really gonna go down that road again? Did you read any of this thread or just post and run? Regardless of what you believe, YOU CANNOT ACHIEVE THE SAME RESULTS BY SHOOTING HANDHELD. Period. Tell yourself whatever you like. What looks great on your monitor will look like garbage as a 4'x6' print, litho, etc.

There is a reason the worlds best pano shooters use gear to get the camera where it should be. Shooting large scale pano's handheld is like using a hammer to put together a puzzle.

I did read this thread and posted a couple times in this thread. I'm not telling myself anything, i'm telling you that a tripod is not necessary. Take shots with tripod and take them without and see if one looks like garbage, if it do, you need to get better software or maybe a different camera. If you read the entire thread you will see that there is several people saying a triopd isn't necessary. Maybe you're saying a tripod is needed because of using a slow shutter speed than yes i agree but if you're using fast enough shutter speed to get sharp photos than a tripod is a waste of time...

I do have prints made. 1 foot by 3 feet and they look great and they're not just for my personal use, i sell them.
If you're doing 4x6 ratio, why do you need to shoot pano shots?

 

[Arkanjel Imaging]

If you look at the op you will see the question is in regards to a choice between two pieces of equipment. I never asked if anyone thought they were necessary or not. But thats all anyone is interested in posting about. So just drop it.

 

[senojekips]

I fully realise that this is an old thread. I never cease to be amazed at the fact that there are always arrogant people who cannot just answer the question asked by the OP and must get always assume that the poster does not know what he/she wants.

These people seem more intent asserting their own dominance over others than actually trying to be helpful.

If you can't be helpful, just move on, believe me you don't "know it all".

My apologies for having hijacked your thread Arkangel Imaging, i just couldn't help myself.

 

[Gavjenks]

Tell me again why you need to perfectly level tripod to take a panorama? This is something completely news to me. The only important requirement to making a panorama is rotating around the nodal point to avoid parallax (doesn't sound relevant here), and even then it's only a problem if there's a significant mix between foreground and background.

Dunno if anybody addressed this (didn't read all the pages), but if your camera isn't on a level base, then as you rotate it, a straight horizontal line in the world will become a sine curve in your final image (with a period of 360 degrees of rotation), as the camera points more up or more down as it rotates around the un-level base. This means that you'll have to crop off more from the top and bottom, which wastes pixels, AND even if you do crop, your image will still be warped in the part you cropped.

This is true even if you set up the nodal point correctly (two different issues).



Even if your software is able to correct for the sine wave, this will still involve unnecessary stretching or throwing away pixels in the process, which will hurt your resolution, etc. It is ideal to warp your images as little as possible in software, even if it is capable of doing so.

 

[480sparky]

Dunno if anybody addressed this (didn't read all the pages), but if your camera isn't on a level base, then as you rotate it, a straight horizontal line in the world will become a sine curve in your final image (with a period of 360 degrees of rotation), as the camera points more up or more down as it rotates around the un-level base. This means that you'll have to crop off more from the top and bottom, which wastes pixels, AND even if you do crop, your image will still be warped in the part you cropped............

Some softwares allow you to compensate for an off-level shot in post.