I've been into photography for about two years now, and I just got a new tripod and a nodal ninja, a panoramic tripod head attachment for Christmas. The nodal ninja is just about the cheapest and highest quality pano head out there, and after using it for a few weeks, it's a piece of cake.

For anyone interested in pano photography, here are some links that you can't live without:

• Nodal Ninja


• What the heck is an entrance pupil?


• How to find the entrance pupil for your camera/lens combination


• Entrance Pupil Database


• The Panosaurus pano head


• A "Quick" Overview of QTVR

The panosaurus doesn't hold a candle to the nodal ninja, so for the hundred dollar price range, you can't beat the ninja.

Here are some sample shots I did of my parents' new house in Houston, stitched with Realviz Stitcher:


one of the stair cases...


the master bath...


and a full spherical render of the kitchen...

I'm getting better at this little by little, but it requires so much setup time that it's easy to miss a step. If it's off even by a millimeter, the stitch won't work. One thing I'm having trouble figuring out is how to take that last photo of the ground where the tripod sits to create a full rendered sphere.

I'm doing these interior shots at f/22 with such a long exposure that I can't hold the camera still for that long to take that last shot, and I end up getting a shadow of my legs in it or something like that. The handle that controls the tilt of the tripod gets in the way of two shots every time, also. Any tips would be greatly appreciated...

And last but not least, here's a sample quicktime render of that last image from above. It has plenty of errors, but it's a start:

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