Does somebody has experience with the following cobination:

Coolpix 5700
Kaidan QUICKPAN III CS (Camera Specific) with cradle for the 5700
FC-E9 fisheye converter on UR-E12 adapter

Everything mounted together makes the lens beeing about 10 cm away from the centre of the tripod. This can not be right can it?

Greetings,
Gerwin

Not sure. But it should have the nodal point approximate (where edge of glass touches the cone shaped metal housing).  Usually this is where the "Nikon FC-E9 x.20 Converter" text is written in white letters.

Any way to take a picture of the camera/lens/ bracket and post it here on the forum?

Other than that you can talk directly to me using these instant messengers:

Yahoo  screen name 'texas360dave'

MSN screen name 360texas@hotmail.com (chat only no email pls)

Just add my screen name to your names list.

And I will try to walk you through finding the nodal point.  So that you can use Panoweaver to stitch great images.

Dave

Hi Dave!

Thank you very much for your help.

This is the answer i got from Kaidan...:

The QP-III CS with the CP 5700 Cradle does not support a fisheye lens because the Nikon CP5700 camera itself does not support a fisheye lens. If you go to the lens selection in the menu there is the standard lens, wide angle and telephoto but no fisheye.

Well, that's not true. The 5700 supports the fisheye lens. I have posted two pictures for you (i left it bigger per purpose that you can zoom in and see details):

I hope you can help me out. I need to have a job done next weekend (F1 race in Budapest) and I specially shopped this expensive equipment to have better results... I don't want to go back and use my old Nikon 700 (which at least has the right nodal point :-))

Greetings from Autria

Gerwin

Gerwin,

Their is no way that will ever work, the way I see it!

The camera needs to go back some distance like maybe another 5-8cm.

Sorry to be the barer of bad news

You may do better using a Manfrotto style tripod and finding your own nodel point. Basically your nodel point of the lens needs to be over your tripod level bubble and from what I can see in your photo's.

The "red" lines in this photo should be inline.

Please note: the nodel mark is an approximate only!

Good luck, I hope someone else has better news for you.

Regards, Smooth

Actually, its the E12 reduction ring that is too long that is causing this issue.  Bernie might be making a shorter adapter ring for this situation.  Look here http://members.rogers.com/nextphoto/ 

He made a sliding adapter for the nikon 5000 and the kaidan 990 pan head which is also wider at the top that facilitated taking fisheye images.

The fisheye nodal point range is between Smooths red line and my blue line.  See below.

Hi guys!
Thank you for the great tips and pictures. I would need a fast solution (also in terms of shipping to Europe) as I need to use the set in Budapest at the next weekend. So what about the Manfrotto brackets. I am not so keen with their product range, what could fit? Do you have any idea?

I also tried to use 3 fisheyes instead of 2 and the results are much better, only when it comes close to the tripod the parallex effect is very obvious, so i think couple of centimeters would do it. Is the nodal point less important when taking 3 fisheyes? It seems...

Greetings,

Gerwin

Actually, from where I sit... you need to move the camera/lens assembly as far back on the pan head as possible.  We stitch 3 shot pano's and stitch with Panoweaver.  Parallax is going to be your biggest issue.  We have a very small tutorial at the bottom of

http://360texas.com/tips/nodalpts.htm

Essentially, you set your tripod up at the end of a table... lens should be about 10cm (4") above the table top. 

Place a piece of paper on the table,

Place 1  extra AA battery about 4 cm from the lens and another AA about 30cm (12") in the back.

Level up your pan head

Looking through your LCD align the bottom of the BACK battery over the top of the FRONT battery cap.  Both batteries should appear to be standing over each other.

Using the Fisheye 2 option:

take 1 picture straight ahead (you should see the stacked batteries).  Rotate 30 deg left and level up the pan head/camera/lens again.. then take the second... rotate right and reshoot... examine if the batteries change positions.

If the batteries seem to move postions in the picture... you have NOT found the nodal point.  Move camera forward or backward and reshoot.

Dave

Hi again!

Dave from Kaidan was answering me:
"I don't recommend using the fisheye on the CP 5700 but if you are going to use it on the CP 5700 the only other bracket I would recommend would be the QP-III Twin-Axis Bracket: http://www.kaidan.com/Detail.bok?no=46 "

Do you know the Twin-Axis Bracket? Is it bigger? I mean those 10 cm that i need?

Greetings,

Gerwin

OK. I change the bracket now to the QP-III Twin-Axis Bracket and pray it arrives until Wednesday... I was promised that this will fit. Thanks for your help.

Gerwin

I will check the forum each day over the weekend.. looking for your comments... and will offer help when I can...

Best help is to work the Instant Chat messengers.. for 1:1 help.  Ah you are in Austria. GMT +1 Paris [Austria] it is about right.

Talk later

Dave