Re: King Pano Head - Mahmood from Dubai

It means that if we have to point camera down or upwards we do not get degree angles. Am I right?

No - this in incorrect.

Than how I will come to know that I am shooting +45 and -45.

First off - the King Pano head DOES have markings to turn the head UP.

It just doesn't have them when you turn the head down. As I mentioned, however, the down angle is very easy to estimate. Basically, I just move the head down until I can see the rim of the pano head in the view finder - then adjust accordingly.

I have mostly used it with the Cannon Rebel and the default 18-50mm lens. I did rent the 10-22mm to try that lens, and you can see some samples here:

http://www.petergotlib.com/vr/10mm.html

NOTE: The bottom face of the second VR - Creek house - has not been retouched in PhotoShop, so you can see the size of the foot print the King Pano leaves when using the 10mm.

SOME NOTES AND TIPS while experimenting with the Canon 10-22mm lens.

Most posts I read while looking up info on the Canon 10mm lens suggested shooting 8 around. I tried 6 around and, as you can see, got excellent results. However, I did have some issues in PTgui that I never had when stitching images from my 18-50mm lens.

First off - I found that for some reason, the auto control point generator simply failed to find enough control points to properly align the images. Every VR I shot with the 10mm - 6 around combo - had to be stitched by manually setting control points. This can get a bit tedious. I plan to make a separate post on this later, to see if I can get help in figuring out why PTgui would be having such a difficult time finding points when clearly, my shots lined up perfectly with a manual stitch.

The second point I would share is that when setting control points manually in PTgui from images taken 6 around with the 10mm lens - it gets harder to identify matching points the further up and down you go along the images (the further you go to the images edge) . I assume this is because of the minor distortion caused by the 10mm on the edges, and from the big shit in positions using only 6 shots around. The angle of the points are revolved pretty radically along the edge of each pair of images. You can roate the image in PTgui - but I didn't really find doing so that much help. You just have to find points that are clearly distinguishable - even when rotated to a new angle.

Sincerely,

Peter Gotlib

http://www.gotlibdesign.com/GD