Taking the best Panoramic

[maranelloboy05]

I tried searching but could not find what I was looking for.

What is the best way to take panoramics? I read that you need to use the entrance pupil for the pivot point but don't really understand it, can someone put it in layman's terms? I'll be using a 17-40mm, is it best to shoot at 40mm to avoid distortion? Thanks for any answers.

[argyle]

The entrance pupil is also known as the nodal point of the lens. You only need to be concerned with the nodal point when you have objects in your immediate foreground. Other than that, you don't have to be concerned with it. Do a google on "determining nodal point" and you'll find all that you need to know.

[Picture North Carolina]

Yea, and in most average panorama situations, today's software works just fine. So don't do like I did - waste a bunch of money on a bunch of nodal point brackets.

(Anybody want to buy about $600 of Really Right Stuff nodal point crap)? ;)

[DANATTHEROCK]

Yep, keep its simple.

Settings the same for all shots.

Shoot vertical 5-9 images and avoid the hotdog shape pano.

Same ISO, f/stop, shutter speed, etc.. on all shots!!!

Don't use a polarizer!

Let the software do it's work.

KISS principle

[trevorpdx]

Thanks for the pointers, guys... I was about to post up a beginners panoramic question, but this thread did a nice job of answering my question. Just one other quick question - what software do you guys like for the panoramics? Is Photoshop CS3 a good tool? I'm guessing there may be a little manual labor involved :D but I don't mind that.

[WillOPhotos]

use PTgui or Photoshop cs4 both are the best imo at stitching and blending, I love Panos :lol:

[mattinynp]

I use Photoshop cs4 and it does a great job

[TheNephilim]

Hey ho!
This is my first post in this forum :D

What is the best way to take panoramics?

It depends on your needs. Do you want to take single-row, multi-row or spherical panoramas? For simple single-row panoramas you do not necessarily need a no-parallax-point-adapter. Such adapters are important to take multi-row (however, sometimes this is doable without a npp-adapter) and spherical panoramas. A npp-adapter becomes increasingly insignificant the farther the landscape, building or whatever is away!

use PTgui or Photoshop cs4 both are the best imo at stitching and blending, I love Panos :lol:

I love panos too, but for sake of completeness Hugin is quite useable too! The latest version (afaik 2009.04) also supports a clean stitching of nadir and zenith, that was imho a problem in previous versions.

I use Photoshop cs4 and it does a great job

Yes it does, but Photoshop is useless for e.g. spherical panoramas. For such kinds of panoramas you have to use alternatives like PTGui, Hugin, Autopano etc.