To cut a long story short, I still do not know where in terms of mm. from the lens base, the Entrance Pupil is on my lenses, why is this relativity easy information so hard to find even on the web!
Brgds, Mike (Denmark)
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=159420\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
You will have lots of fun doing panoramas. I have been doing them for the past 10 years, though, and have never been confronted with the need to know the location of the Entrance Pupil of my lenses. The nodal point is important to avoid parallax errors, and is very easy to find. But in all of the reading I have done about panos I have never come across a mention of the Entrance Pupil.
You sound like a person who does intense research in order to do something perfectly. But with todays software, such as CS3's PhotoMerge, you can even handhold the camera and still get perfectly stitched panos. I do understand the need for a perfectly level camera rotating about the nodal point if doing QTVR work, though.
My advice to you is to keep researching, but go out and shoot right now. I think your anxiety about doing it perfectly will dispel as soon as you see the results of your shooting.
I now do panos as a challenge to myself, where the camera is not level, and the distance between the foreground and subject vary greatly. For example, standing on the shore of a river doing a pano of a bridge going across the river: the camera must be tilted up to a great degree, the depth of field must be great, and the lighting conditions vary widely in the scene.
But in most landscapes, if you use a tripod and either a pano head or simply a focusing rail to set the rotation about the nodal point and make sure the long axis of the lens is centered over the center of the tripod, you will have instant success. Relax, shoot, and most of all, have fun with it.