Confused about Panorama Setups (panorama clamp vs. leveling base)

[DennisG]

'Poor' in the way that the sides of a rectilinear pano are disproportionately stretched out.  When you convert a very long pano to a .mov file for qtvr viewing, the result is very natural as you rotate around the image - no bending RR tracks.  I wonder if it is possible to 'unroll' the .mov on to a flat image that would look natural.

[Ellis Vener]

Concerning Ellis Vener's posted pano of the railroad tracks:  it does not seem to me that there is a camera pitch, or post-processing pitch adjustment that will make both the tracks and the horizon undistortedly linear (i.e. straight, uncurved), from his shooting position.  Only a QTVR file will do that, which looks very natural but is not printable, or a rectilinear projection, which seems to give poor results, at least in PTGui.  If there is a solution to this problem, please let me know.

Thanks

This assumes that the railroad tracks, the highway and the horizon are straight and possibly parallel to each other.

In fact they are are not and each has its own complex set of changes in curvature, and elevation change (grade).  

Can't post a screen shot of the google map aerial view for some reason but the co-ordinates are 33.800493, -84.391566

[simonstucki]

I think no. if you unroll it you get curved lines. which I think for some images works quite well and looks quite natural.

[muntanela]

Three panoramas with Arca Swiss P0