Maybe I am just in a good mood today or maybe it’s the excitement of some awesome shoots that are in the pipe line but I am going to do something I normally avoid and let you in behind the scenes of my panoramic work. By this I mean opening up my camera bag and exposing my gear plus partially opening up my box of tricks.

So let’s begin with the basics and that would be the gear you need. To start with, if you are serious about panoramic photography you need a panoramic head.

Now for those of you out there who are thinking that you have heard this all before and you have taken images perfectly well without one and know lots of people who say you don’t need one, I am not going to argue with you. Instead I would suggest you stop reading here and go shoot a 360° panorama of a small room with lots of curvy lines and then try stitch it together. When you eventually give up trying to get straight lines to meet up, come back and start reading again…

Right so now we are all on the same page being that you have to have a panoramic head to shoot panoramas otherwise you are just looking for trouble. The reason for this a phenomenon called Parallax error http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax and for panoramic photographers it’s the worst possible scenario to encounter in an image because it can’t always be corrected as those of you who tried to shoot the  360° of the room will have undoubtedly have discovered.

What Parallax errors do is cause a shift in the apparent position of foreground and background objects in relation to each other. You can simulate parallax errors by extending extend your arm and pointing your thumb up while lining it up with a vertical object.

Now, turn your head left and right. Notice how the vertical object seems to change position in relation to your thumb as you turn your head. The same thing happens when you turn your camera and results in two images where the foreground and background objects change their relative positions from frame to frame.

To eliminate parallax you have to rotate the lens exactly around its entrance pupil which for cameras is the optical image of the physical aperture as ‘seen’ through the front of the lens system. So what we are basically saying is the entrance pupil is the point of no parallax in the lens and is in a different position for every make and focal length of lens and for every focus setting in the case of zoom lenses.

What you need is a device that can keep the entrance pupil centered over the center of the rotation and you can either build a DIY bracket to do this or buy a pano head which is purpose built for this. Things get more complicated when you have to shoot multi-row panoramic images because the lens has to rotate and tilt around the vertical and horizontal the axis of the entrance pupil.

So here is my advice when setting about choosing a head and this is based on my own experience with a variety of options.

There are three main types of heads available:

• Single Row heads
• Pan and Tilt heads for multi-row images
• Robotic heads that do most of the work for you.

Single Row heads

• What they do – These heads simply allow you to setup your camera so that it rotates around the entrance pupil.
• Advantages – They are often light weight and compact and are easy to haul up a mountain. These heads are more often than not used with fisheye lenses allowing 360° scenes to be captured in 4 or 6 frames.
• Disadvantages – They are limited to single row panoramas which limit the size of the resultant image. 360° Images need to be shot with fisheye lenses.

Pan and Tilt heads

• What they do – These heads allow you to setup your camera so that it rotate and tilts around the entrance pupil.
• Advantages – They are more versatile in that they care for a larger range of lenses. You often have the option of a unit that is designed for a fixed camera lens configuration but I wouldn’t waste my money on these and would rather go for a fully adjustable model which will let you shoot an infinite number of segments and row resulting in potentially huge images with phenomenal detail.
• Disadvantages – They are heavy, bulky and often quite expensive.

Robotic Heads

• What they do – These are the new kids on the block and come in both the Single Row and Pan and Tilt varieties.
• Advantages – They are fully automated and take a lot of the guess work and hassle out of panoramic photography.
• Disadvantages – They are pretty heavy, reasonably expensive, need batteries to operate and are not as versatile as the manual heads.

So which of the three do I use?

I shoot an incredibly diverse range of panoramas, in fact everything from scenery to car interiors so really I need all three heads but there are really two that would cover most needs for nearly everyone.

The robotic head is a nice to have but I can really do everything it does with my Pan and Tilt head given enough time and dedication. Having tried numerous heads on the market, I would only recommend one brand and that’s 360precision www.360precision.com .

They products are by far the best designed and  best finished heads that I have seen to date and I will be doing a review on one of their heads in the near future. In the meantime, the heads that I would recommend are the Atome for single row imaging and the Adjuste Giga for multi-row panoramas. In case anyone is wondering at this stage, I am not sponsored by 360precision its just that they build heads that are as close to the one I designed for myself as I have ever seen.

Atome

Adjuste Giga

I currently have an Adjuste Giga but I intend to get an Atome for some travelling that I intend doing soon but will probably still take my Adjuste along in my suitcase. The 360precision heads are quite pricy but as I said they are extremely well made and designed.

I have had a few dealings with 360precision and have had no issues but you may find posts on the web with people who have had “problems” and in most cases these stem from communication issues so I have prepared the following  to help you.

When you order the head, make sure that you follow the order up with an email confirming exactly what you have ordered. In the case of an Atome, list the camera and lens combination you will be using and with the Adjuste, which camera body you will be using. The Adjuste has one limitation (not a flaw as many other heads have the same limitation) that you may hit and that is that it only allows for 4 adjustable preset rotation patterns (the number of clicks that it will automatically move). The good news is that this can be changes by fitting different detent plates and there is a range available as standard options.

Make sure that you check before ordering if there will be a charge for ordering with another detent plate (if not the standard one) and also find out if there will be a additional charge for ordering with a custom plate should you need one. Remember to put all of this in the email you send after placing the order. Matt who you will probably deal with is actually pretty helpful; it’s just he seems to get a bit annoyed when people don’t read the instructions which I think many of us may do after a while.

Now this is the important part. The heads are usually not stock items due to the huge range of configurations and will more than likely be made to order. This takes some time but many people get confused as you will more than likely receive a notification for the courier to say that a pickup has been booked just after you placed the order.

In my experience, this does not mean that your head is ready or has been shipped by just that the courier has been alerted to expect your head at some stage. There is some info explaining this on the website but most people don’t bother reading it, myself included the first time I ordered (this is where most of the problems you will read about arise and probably why Matt tears his hair out).

It was only after my email asking where my head was got ignored that I went and read the info on the site and all was explained. There after everything else should go pretty smoothly.

Right now you know what head I use there is another critical piece of equipment that needs to go between your head and your tripod. When shooting panoramas you pano head needs to be almost perfectly level. Your stitching software should be able to do minor adjustments but there is a limit to what it can do.

Those of you who have tried to get a tripod perfectly level on uneven ground, like the side of a mountain will know that it’s not as easy as you may think so you really need to get a Manfrotto 338

or 438 Leveling Base.

Personally I would go for the 438 as it’s faster to use and is precise enough for the task at hand.

So you now know what head I used and what goes in between it and the tripod but what about the tripod.

Your tripod is the foundation for your panoramic head and like most things in life, if you don’t have a strong foundation, things can get a little shaky.

I currently have two sets of tripod legs that I use depending on the application. If I am shooting a large multi-row panorama where every image’s alignment is going to be critical due to the sheer number of images involved then I will probably choose my Gitzo Studex wich is really more of a studio tripod but is rock solid.

If I am going up a mountain with a fisheye lens, then I will probably go for my light weight Gitzo reporter. Having said that, if I plan to shoot with anything with a longer focal length than my fisheye, I will rather haul my Studex up the mountain.

I am currently looking at a set of sturdy carbon fibre legs from Slik and Indura. Both of these seem to be good options that are well prices and both are as sturdy as my Studex but weigh a lot less.

So That brings us to the end of part one. In part two I will reveal the lenses I uses and why I choose each lens for a particular project.

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