Make a wooden pano head: How to Make
August 26, 2005 | Filed Under General
Homemade Spherical Pano Head
I had a question emailed to me today and thought I’d post the answer, because it will help people who are just starting to experiment with making spherical panos. If you really enjoy doing it, then I suggest you buy the best head on the market, which is the 360 Precision Head. I have one of these and it is solid, beautiful and about as perfect a head as you can find.
Before I got the 360 Precision Head, I had made my own pano head from wood. To do this you will need three pieces of wood. Two will become joined to formed a “L.” The third will become a swing arm. Mine is constructed out of 3/4″ Ash. The main piece is shaped like an L. The bottom of the L attaches to a tripod. To get the inside distance from the tripod screw to the vertical part of the L, you need to find the distance from the bottom of your camera to the center of your lens, and then you add 3/4″ to this distance (this is the width of my 3/4″ Ash. If you use something different use that measurement.) To the vertical part of the L you will attach a swing arm. This arm swings reaches from the top of the L to almost the bottom of the L. The distance from the pivot point of the swing arm is the distance from the tripod mount on the bottom of the camera to the nodel point of the lens. The pivot point of the swing arm and the tripod mount for the L piece must lay on the same plain. So if one is 1″ from the front of the L, the other should be 1″ from the front of the L.
This easy to make (sort of) mount will allow you to make spherical panos. I suggest using dove tail joints to help hold the “L” at 90 degrees to each other. This is the only problem with the head. You can adjust for the roll of the images in PT, but the 360 Precision Head avoids this problem.
Homemade Level Pano Head
If you just want to make one picture high, but high quality panos, you can make a simpler head. I made mine out of two pieces. Put them together in a “L” shape. To the bottom drill a hole at the front of the L. This hole must be the distance from the center of the lens to the bottom of your camera. Then on the upright of the “L” rout a line as long as you want. This will allow you to slide the camera up and down the pano head. I use this simple “L” to help find the nodel (entrance pupil) of the lens that I use. Also, if I’m making a pano with a longer lens than normal (12-24 DX @ 12 normally,) I can use this to get perfect results. Here is a picture of the head.
Pano Software
PT Tools is free and on the internet. I haven’t gotten around to it yet, but PTGUI is the best trail front end from PT that I’ve used. With my new 360 Precision Head, I’m not sure I’ll need to buy PTGUI, because I can make a template that will stitch flawlessly every pano I shoot. And I won’t have to select control points!!!!
But, as long as, Auto Stitich remains free, it is the ideal solution for web sized images, but it loses sharpness for big prints. The biggest print I’ve done so far using Autostitch is an 8 image 60″ long pano that prints at just under 7″ high. I could take this out to 21″ x 180″ and it would probably still look great, but I need to compare the quality to PT. Auto Stitch is a demo that expires every so often. Who knows how long this will be around for free???
I hope this helps some.