Learned the hard way!

Andy · October 21, 2006

Well, I put off my decision to buy some pano gear too long, and when I finally rang up Really Right Stuff they were a bit behind on supply - and so I had to settle for some inferior kit from Bogen :cry Watching Marc Muench this week, slip in, slip out, of his ballhead, pano rig, etc, was enough to make me want to shove him off the cliff, and keep his gear! :lol3

So, to sum up:

1) don't procrastinate, don't be dum.
2) Manfrotto's 360 pano rig is the most rube-goldberg rig I've ever seen and used. :puke
3) Manfrotto's 468MGRC2 Ball head is nice, but there's no spirt level :cry

The above got promptly returned today :thumb and I've placed my order for Really Right Stuff LR-II Ballhead and their Pano Package
and a 5D L Plate

:clap

rosselliot · October 21, 2006

just to clarify...
you spent $500 on a ball tripod head? is it that good?

if you knew me well, you'd be floored to hear me say this, but even I find that a tad expensive...

- RE

Andy · October 21, 2006

rosselliot wrote:

just to clarify...
you spent $500 on a ball tripod head? is it that good?

if you knew me well, you'd be floored to hear me say this, but even I find that a tad expensive...

- RE

Well, actually it's $390. But yeah - and it's worth every penny

Art Scott · October 21, 2006

Andy wrote:

Well, I put off my decision to buy some pano gear too long, and when I finally rang up Really Right Stuff they were a bit behind on supply - and so I had to settle for some inferior kit from Bogen :cry Watching Marc Muench this week, slip in, slip out, of his ballhead, pano rig, etc, was enough to make me want to shove him off the cliff, and keep his gear!

So, to sum up:

1) don't procrastinate, don't be dum.
2) Manfrotto's 360 pano rig is the most rube-goldberg rig I've ever seen and used. :puke
3) Manfrotto's 468MGRC2 Ball head is nice, but there's no spirt level :cry

The above got promptly returned today and I've placed my order for Really Right Stuff LR-II Ballhead and their Pano Package
and a 5D L Plate

Which pano package did you get....that link lists several:D

You are very correct, when decides to get equipment it should be done then....not later...sometimes (as you found out) later means to comprimise for something lessar....

Andy · October 21, 2006

Art Scott wrote:

Which pano package did you get....that link lists several:D

Pano elements package- the pano head and a bracket.

ian408 · October 21, 2006

It's funny. We all try and buy stuff on the cheap. Usually, we end up
buying something else, usually more expensive. In the end, we spend
more than if we had just bought the right thing the first time

Andy · October 21, 2006

ian408 wrote:

It's funny. We all try and buy stuff on the cheap. Usually, we end up
buying something else, usually more expensive. In the end, we spend
more than if we had just bought the right thing the first time

Well, this time, it wasn't parsimony but rather procrastination that caused this problem. At least, the silver lining, is some first-hand experience with some rather substandard equipment. RRS to the rescue, the good stuff should be here in a few days!

ian408 · October 21, 2006

Andy wrote:

RRS to the rescue, the good stuff should be here in a few days!

Looking forward to the review!

pathfinder · October 21, 2006

The RRS Ballheads are that good. I no longer use an Arca Swiss.

You will love the BH-40 and the pano kit. Great stuff.

It's only expensive when you buy it. It will be a joy forever.

David_S85 · October 22, 2006

Got mine before the Utah trip. I give RRS my Highly Recommended rating of four Dgrin smilies.

My RRS (single row) pano kit includes the BH-40 ballhead with the PCL-1 panning clamp atop, an L-bracket which is always mounted to my 20D, and their calibrated MPR-CLII nodal slide.

Andy, don't forget to fully calibrate your setup for each lens or each frequently used focal length on a zoom. It is an hour well spent, I assure you. I placed (removable) markings onto the nodal slide for that purpose, along with notations on how many overlapping shots and degrees each focal requires for an overlapping set of shots to produce a 360º image.

This RRS system is exceptionally quick. In the field, I use the PCL clamp alone with the L plate (I don't mind not using a quick-release clamp). When a panorama is in order, I just dismount the camera/L-bracket combo, insert the nodal slide, and remount the camera in portrait mode, adjust the sliding plate to the mark to match the lens, shoot, turn the PCL lower pivot to the next suggested degree, and fire off another. If a critical set is needed, I also use a wired remote for the camera. If an uber critical set is needed, I also set the cam to bracketing mode.

The PCL clamp is so smooth and well made that I don't even need to tighten the lower lock knob when revolving and shooting. I do leave it a wee bit taught so the weight of what's above won't by chance creep the setting off the mark.

mwgrice · October 22, 2006

Andy wrote:

Well, I put off my decision to buy some pano gear too long, and when I finally rang up Really Right Stuff they were a bit behind on supply - and so I had to settle for some inferior kit from Bogen :cry Watching Marc Muench this week, slip in, slip out, of his ballhead, pano rig, etc, was enough to make me want to shove him off the cliff, and keep his gear!

[...]

For those of you going on the 2007 shootout, the real moral of the story is not to stand next to Andy.:D

Barefoot and Natural · October 22, 2006

mwgrice wrote:

For those of you going on the 2007 shootout, the real moral of the story is not to stand next to Andy.:D

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha :lol4

Loose rock right!!!! :lol4

You R 2 funny!!!

gus · October 22, 2006

mwgrice wrote:

For those of you going on the 2007 shootout, the real moral of the story is not to stand next to Andy.:D

Yep...if it looks good he turns into a 12 week old lab puppy...knocking stuff over & slobbering on your gear.

Andy · October 22, 2006

David_S85 wrote:

This RRS system is exceptionally quick.

All good stuff! And y eah, the speed! I was really, really impressed. Thanks for posting. Say, you've got some started already, how about a mini-review?

Justiceiro · October 22, 2006

Andy, how does that ballhead compare to the Acratech Ultimate Ballhead. I just got one for about $300. Did I waste my money?

Also, I just shelled out a lot of cash for my pre-trip gear.

$550 for the 70-300 IS
$75 for lens accesories (hood, etc.)
$300 for the ballhead
$75 for a new CF card

I'm at $1000 already, and I'm sure I've forgotten something. I have the collision of two major problems:

1- I am going to be in some spectacular mountain ranges (the Pamirs) and I want very badly to take some good 360 degree shots.

2- My CFO (a.k.a. "wife") is rumbling with suppressed discontent like Krakatoa.

I really can't lay out another $3-400 for pano gear, so I have the following questions-

A) Is the panosaurus the worse than useless piece of junk that it looks like, or does it actually work.

can I take pano shots with the Acratceh ballhead alone, or will they really stink.

C) Is it possible to DIY with a pano set up?

ian408 · October 22, 2006

They are comparable. I think Acratech would be good for light weight
stuff (though the claim is it will hold the heavy stuff too). One of the
biggest differences is the controls--here the RRS wins hands down
with features like drag adjustment. Next the RRS has two slots to go
vertical with. To make the Acratech do this can be a challenge.

Do you need pano gear? When your shots are all long, probably not.
Where rotating around the nodal point matters is when you absolutely
need to control parallax--shots that are relatively close for example.
Plenty of folks shoot panos and then rely on the software to help fix
any parallax problems. i should probably put fix in quotes because
depending on the severity, this might not work as well as you'd like.

Ian

Justiceiro wrote:

Andy, how does that ballhead compare to the Acratech Ultimate Ballhead. I just got one for about $300. Did I waste my money?

Also, I just shelled out a lot of cash for my pre-trip gear.

$550 for the 70-300 IS
$75 for lens accesories (hood, etc.)
$300 for the ballhead
$75 for a new CF card

I'm at $1000 already, and I'm sure I've forgotten something. I have the collision of two major problems:

1- I am going to be in some spectacular mountain ranges (the Pamirs) and I want very badly to take some good 360 degree shots.

2- My CFO (a.k.a. "wife") is rumbling with suppressed discontent like Krakatoa.

I really can't lay out another $3-400 for pano gear, so I have the following questions-

A) Is the panosaurus the worse than useless piece of junk that it looks like, or does it actually work.

can I take pano shots with the Acratceh ballhead alone, or will they really stink.

C) Is it possible to DIY with a pano set up?

NHBubba · October 22, 2006

Andy wrote:

2) Manfrotto's 360 pano rig is the most rube-goldberg rig I've ever seen and used. :puke

I have to disagree w/ this. I'm sure the RSS stuff is more than enough for casual, single row senic panos. If you know how to use it, the Manfrotto is easily the most flexible pano mount I've ever seen or heard of. We had an intern that worked for us for a while who was involved in an outfit that did fully immersive photography. They did full 360x360 VR stuff. His equipment of choice was a Sigma 8mm fish-eye w/ one of these mounts. The thing that the Manfrotto let him do that I don't see the capacity for from the RSS stuff is the ability to roll the body off axis. The resulting rough-edit looked a little goofy; each shot formed a stripe that ran from the zenith to the nadir at an angle. The successive shots form stripes next to it. It is really hard to explain. I wish I had one of his shots after stitching, before blending to show what I mean. But using the angled shots w/ the fish eye made blending these things trivial.

That said, I can't afford one of these things. Our intern couldn't either. The only reason that he got the setup he had was that the outfit he worked for had an accident that damaged the mount. They filed a claim and he somehow ended up w/ the mount. One of those right-place, right-time kinda things.

Justiceiro wrote:

C) Is it possible to DIY with a pano set up?

I did. I built a homemade mount based on this Max Lyons Forum post. I am a software engineer, not a machinist. My mount leaves a little something to be desired. I feel I could have done a better DIY job using plastic or wood. Metal working is not really for me.

Justiceiro wrote:

A) Is the panosaurus the worse than useless piece of junk that it looks like, or does it actually work.

I would buy it. It is very close to the DIY setup I built.. and the price is right. I am confident that you could make some very nice row panos using a setup like the panosaurus. Full immersive VR is a differnet story.

That said, they use PVC... if you are decent w/ your hands you might be albe to make something very much like it for the cost of materials.

Justiceiro wrote:

can I take pano shots with the Acratceh ballhead alone, or will they really stink.

If you are strictly doing landscapes w/ wide angle lenses, maybe. The key is the distance from the camera to the nearest (significant) detail. If you are just taking photos of trees 10's and 100's of feet away, then you can stray from the nodal point a little bit and get away w/ it. W/ details up close, you cannot tolerate as much error.

And obviously the stitching will always be easier the closer you are to the nodal point.

David_S85 · October 23, 2006

Andy wrote:

All good stuff! And y eah, the speed! I was really, really impressed. Thanks for posting. Say, you've got some started already, how about a mini-review?

The Assignment Desk has spoken. In between my jobs and the lousy weather here, I'll try to put one together within a few weeks.

Andy · October 23, 2006

David_S85 wrote:

The Assignment Desk has spoken. In between my jobs and the lousy weather here, I'll try to put one together within a few weeks.

Thanks :s85

SteveF · October 24, 2006

You'll love the RRS pano package. I have the spherical and it's pretty top notch.

I just have nail polish marks on my plates to align the lenses - it works but that chart looks much nicer. I guess I only do the panos with primes so there is less to remember.

This was a 2x7 shot at Zabrinski point, 1dsmk2 and the cz21. File ended up after cropping being in the 6000x10000 pixel range. Only trouble with these big pics is that I keep needing to put additions on the house to have room to hang them.

Justiceiro · October 24, 2006

What's the method used to figure out a lenses nodal point, and how many "turns" it takes to complete 360 degrees? Is there literature with the pano heads, do you just eyeball it, or is there a formula?

David_S85 · October 24, 2006

Justiceiro wrote:

What's the method used to figure out a lenses nodal point, and how many "turns" it takes to complete 360 degrees? Is there literature with the pano heads, do you just eyeball it, or is there a formula?

I'll be working up a bit of a tutorial on that sometime soon. But in the meantime...

To address your first question, before the nodal point of a lens is calibrated, you'll need a method of centering your lens/camera over the central pivot on your tripod while panning right or left. For most everyone this means a device for moving the camera/lens left or right, and also forward and backward. Ideally, this means a nodal slide and a bracket that the camera attaches to and positions that one can quickly locate repeatedly. You can fabricate one or buy the hardware. Its dollars vs. time (if you're handy).

Once you have the hardware, then comes calibration. When a lens is pointed a number of degrees left or right of a subject, there is a great chance of parallax error. What that means is that foreground and background items don't line up correctly in adjacent shots. You can simulate this effect yourself by outstretching your arm firmly holding it in place, sighting onto one finger. Open and close each of your eyes seperately. Whats in the background isn't in alignment using each eye. That's what happens when you turn your camera left or right shooting either side of the same subject if your system isn't pivoting at the optical center of your lens.

Calibration corrects this parallax error so that all subjects remain in alignment no matter where you point your camera/lens.

Where this can get tricky is when using many lenses or zooms. The "nodal" point is different for each focal. So one not only needs to be able to repeat their calibration, but to alter the position of the camera/lens for each lens used. That's why I use a chart (see picture in previous post).

The second part of your question concerns how many shots make up a 360º set. That depends on many factors. If you're shooting portrait, then its more. Landscape will be less, since most cameras have a wider aspect in that orientation. Landscape vs. portrait is a tradeoff between less # of shots or how tall (in degrees) you want your resulting image to be. Personally, I like to gain pano height and don't care how many shots it takes. I can keep or crop the height later in editing. You will always lose a bit of height in the final image, so overshoot your subject's height by using a wider lens than you think you'll need.

For overlapping each shot, try 15 to 20% on each side. Less than 15% and you may run into stitching trouble, but more than 20% is a waste.

Barrel and pincushion distortion should be dealt with (for each shot) before stitching takes place. Some software will do this automatically, providing the preferences and profiles are set up with the proper information first.

You choice of focal length, your camera's crop factor, camera orientation and your overlapping of each shot all play into how many shots it will take. I often shoot the full way around and decide later if I just want to use a section of the image, or the entire 360º.

Manfr3d · October 25, 2006

Justiceiro wrote:

1- I am going to be in some spectacular mountain ranges (the Pamirs) and I want very badly to take some good 360 degree shots.

2- My CFO (a.k.a. "wife") is rumbling with suppressed discontent like Krakatoa.

I really can't lay out another $3-400 for pano gear, so I have the following questions-

A) Is the panosaurus the worse than useless piece of junk that it looks like, or does it actually work.

can I take pano shots with the Acratceh ballhead alone, or will they really stink.

C) Is it possible to DIY with a pano set up?

Hi, I also have the Acratech (V2) and I also use the RRS
Pano Elements Package. How? Well I additionaly bought
the PCL dovetail (~30$), that lets you mount the pcl clamp
on your existing ballhead. This setup It works quite well,
keeps my ballhead light when I dont need the pano stuff,
and I like the flexibility (mount it on another tripod etc).
In your situtation this might be worth to consider.

ziggy53 · October 25, 2006

Never learned.
For a really cheap panoramic setup (Yes, I'm envious of the "good" stuff),

look here:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=45691

ziggy53

Andy · October 26, 2006

So, the good stuff came today.

Anyone considering this stuff, I recommend the PCL-DVTL clamp ($30) in addition to the regular gear, it allows use of the panning head on top of the regular ball head. Quite handy.

RRS gets kudos for "built tough" and "packed with care" and also, each piece is in it's own handy neoprene sac, quite nice.

f-rider · October 17, 2008

How 'bout this set up??
I keep pulling up this thread when I search on "panoramic" so thought I'd add something new to consider. Not cheap, but not as expensive as the RRS Pano Package. Nothing wrong with RRS.... just pricey (~530).

Kirk photo Long Rail Plate (LRP), $125. Kirk L Bracket (for my D80 with MB-D80 vertical grip) $170; Kirk Quick Release Platform QRC2 to replace the Bogen Manfrotto QR on my B/M Ball head, $60, for a total of $355. Ability to pop all this on and off and do panos without having to dismantle the vertical grip... priceless.

Now I have not pulled the $$ trigger on this, so thought I would throw it out there for comments. The Kirk brand Arca-Swiss style equipment looks well made, robust etc. And I use the Bogen Manfrotto 488 RC2 which is already a panning ball head, with a lock lever and index markings on the base, for precise turns of the tripod head. The Kirk Long Rail plate has a bubble level, as does the Kirk QR plate so getting this level should be easy. And by using the Kirk QR plate and the L Bracket, it should be simply matter of popping the LRP in, for panos, and out again, to pop in the D80 with the vertical grip/ L bracket combo. $355 vs $530 = $175 to spend on other toys.

Am I missing anything here boys?

--Doug

replaces QR on this

Ballhead has panning lock.
This rail slides into the QR base, above

And the D80 is fitted with this

which pops into the rail's quick release base. Bubble level on both the ballhead quick release and the rail's quick release allow leveling.

dancorder · October 18, 2008

f-rider wrote:

Am I missing anything here boys?

I think you're missing an easy way to swivel the camera around. Unless I'm misunderstanding you are going to have to get the base of the tripod completely level to be able to use the panning built into your ballhead. This can be a pain and take a while to get right as you have to fiddle with leg lengths on the tripod and then see if it's level, then repeat.

To solve this you can either get a levelling centre column (heavy and quite expensive) or a clamp that lets you rotate the camera above the ball rather than below, like the RRS PCL-1 (also reasonably expensive, but smaller).

I have a PCL-1 screwed directly on to my ballhead as it works fine as a normal clamp too.

As for Kirk gear in general, I have a Kirk L-plate for my D50 and it's very nice so I imagine the rest of their stuff is equally nice.

f-rider · October 18, 2008

:bash
Damn !! I just knew I wasn't going to get away cheap! You are right !! Andy was right... shoulda just bought the expensive stuff in the first place. It is just so hard, though when you're a cheap a** like me.

David_S85 · October 19, 2008

f-rider wrote:

:bash
Damn !! I just knew I wasn't going to get away cheap! You are right !! Andy was right... shoulda just bought the expensive stuff in the first place. It is just so hard, though when you're a cheap a** like me.

It's OK.

The point of this thread is to not learn the hard way. We're here to help you spend money. It is what it is. You could either make a contraption yourself if you're so inclined, or purchase one from the experts. Just don't get intermediate quality gear and then wish you hadn't. Pop for the good stuff. The worst that could happen is you don't use it, then sell it all for almost new on Dgrin.

f-rider · October 21, 2008

OK, how 'bout this setup... saves some dough but keeps important, high quality components, and allows for upgrades later when the economy improves

.

Bogen Manfrotto 627, $55, coupled with a Kirk QRC 1.75, also $55, to sit atop my Bogen 488RC2 ball head.

Add the RRS MPR CL, for $110 and a plate for my D80, $55, and I'm taking panos for $275 !! The real savings comes in using the inexpensive substitute for the RRS PCL-1 Panning Clamp, which sells for $235, saving me $125. Later, I can buy up to the PCL-1, and keep the substitute panning clamp to use on a monopod or table top tripod, etc.

Just thinkin' out loud hear but would appreciate, again, your thougths on what I might be missing. TIA.
--Doug
home?O=ProductDetail&A=showItemLargeImage&Q=&sku=388422&is=REG

home?O=ProductDetail&A=showItemLargeImage&Q=&sku=388422&is=REG

dancorder · October 21, 2008

That looks more like it

I'd seriously consider getting the L-plate for the D80 though. I imagine that you're going to be taking single row panoramas most of the time, in which case you'd ideally have the camera vertical (for more vertical pixels, you can get more horizontal by turning further

).

Learned the hard way!

Comments