Micro positioning plate for panoramic work?

[Bevan.Burns]

Just wondering if anyone out there has ever used something like the Manfrotto Micro positioning plate on a standard head as a means of adjusting your camera to swivel around it's nodal point for doing panorama stitchers. I can't afford one of them fancy QTVR heads, being a student, but could I use a plate for some simple one line cylindrical panos? Am I right in assuming this would work? Thanks!

Bevan

[Lisa Nikodym]

If you want something simple, light and relatively cheap for single-line panos, you can do it with a simple rail on a tripod, such as one from:

http://reallyrightstuff.com/mpr/index.html

You'll need to hand-calibrate where to position the camera on the rail for each focal length of each lens you use, but it's pretty easy to do (if you can't find details somewhere with a web search, let me know if you're interested and I can tell you how I did it).

This method works for me.

Lisa

[Jonathan Wienke]

Just wondering if anyone out there has ever used something like the Manfrotto Micro positioning plate on a standard head as a means of adjusting your camera to swivel around it's nodal point for doing panorama stitchers.

Yes. It works well, but is limited to single-row panos. I use either a bracket or the lens foot (if it has one) to position the camera vertically when shooting panos. With a 1Ds, I can make stitches as big as my computer can handle (~50MP with 6-7 vertical images in a horizontal row), which I've printed up to 24x72" with excellent results. As mentioned, you'll have to have a different position setting for each lens, but if you record the position, you only need to mess with that once.

You'll also want to mark the horizontal position on your tripod head, and put a good level on your tripod, and level the tripod by adjusting the leg length rather than the head position.