Hello everybody!
I recently started to play around with panoramas and yes, it's a lot harder than I thought. There's a lot more than just using Photoshop's photomerge system with the automatic settings! The first thing that caught me unprepared is that I don't think it's possible to be done with ultra wide angle lenses. I did dozens of tries with a Nikkor 14-24mm on a full frame body and even at 24mm there's just no way the images will stitch well together. At first I was trying to overlap about 30% and then I went up to 50%, but even so, I couldn't do it properly. I tried Photoshop, AutoPano and PTGui. Photoshop always gave me the best results.
The best results (see attached photograph) were done with my 35mm f/2 prime lens. These were just perfect and almost wide enough for me. I guess 28mm would be perfect and still good enough to stitch.
Sure, one could just suggest that I should take a few steps backwards and use a longer lens, but sometimes you want to get that same wide angle perspective on the panorama. In those cases you just can't get too far for the wanted composition (only if I had a very tall ladder and tripod ).
So my question is: does anyone successfully use a wide angle lens (24mm or wider) for panoramas? If so, what's the catch?
Edit: I forgot to mention that I'm using a Manfrotto 488RC0 ballhead, which should be suitable for panoramas. Should I use something else to ease the rotation over the nodal point of the lens?
Thank you!
Luis