Hi guys, I need to learn how to do the 360 degree pano's for my work. Don't need to do the full spherical ones just horizontal panning ones then stitched and made into a VR pano. Basically I am looking for someone in Brisbane who has the gear and does these and knows what they are doing, need to sit down and be taught what to do.....is there anyone out there willing to spend the time to show me how?

Yes I Have seen many hundreds of tutorials on the net but many are for spherical etc. There are so many combinations of hardware and software, I just really want to see some in action and if I am happy with the end result then I will buy the same package etc

Thanks
Cam

cant u just take 10 photos from the same spot and just stitch them ?

Yeh that is basically it, I have priced up a proper pano head ($850 Manfrotto) which positions the lense in the correct spot so that sequencial shots all line up correctly and I have downloaded some software to trial but most of them seem to be for fish eye not wideangle lens it's probably more the software choice and correct usage that I'd love some experienced advice on.

Cam

tehre is a good one called pano somthing

photostich

You can just do this in photoshop cs3???... and it aligns all the shots for you??

i read it in a book i htink

I use CS3 to join my pics. Its under file > merge photos.

At this stage I am still using CS2, does the software in CS3 have the ability to match points on corresponding images? Also can it generate the VR file (click and drag the image around for 360o)???

For what it sounds like you want to do, you can do without the rear nodal point tripod head. Or if you think you need it, buy a lump of aluminium plate and a couple of bolts, bolt one end of the plate to a normal tripod head, cut a slot and mount your camera at the other end... experiment to find the centre for a particular lens.

But if you just want a pano, or a scrolling flash file or something, shoot with plenty of overlap and maybe a 50mm lens. Cheap, common wide angle lenses will distort towards the edges (not rectilinear), so don't stitch well. Normal/longer lenses are usually better, but going too long will require many more shots.

So, shoot with a sharp 50, use manual exposure and pick an exposure that will suit most of the 360 view. Overlap maybe 30-50% between shots. This overlap gives you plenty of leeway when editing. Avoid polarising filters unless you can live with uneven blue sky tones and want to edit more to clean up the differences between shots. Shoot vertical pics if you need the height...