Both Manfrotto heads are too large, too heavy and well out of date, not to mention way overpriced.

You will require a panohead that will allow you to shoot around and up and down via a tilting upper arm. We recommend www.agnos.com and inparticular the MrotatorTCPs or MrotatorU panoheads.

These are best suited to common combinations like Canon or Nikon fitted with Sigma 8mm Fisheye or Sigma 10mm FE, Tokina 10-17mm Zoom FE, Nikkor 10.5mm FE.

Regards, Smooth

Distortion is not a factor once the panorama is stitched. When making a 360x180 panorama it is not important what lens is used it can be a regular Rectilinear, Tilt, Wide Angle, Circular Fisheye or Fullframe Fisheye it makes no difference at all.

Sure if you shoot with a fisheye you will see curved lines (before stitching) that would normally display straight but once stitched all distortion is corrected and you cannot tell the difference at all.

If you see distortion in a panorama VR (virtual reality) it is because of a poorly set FOV (field of view) setting meaning the view shown is far too wide and outside the scope of the normal human eye view and perpective. These FOV settings are fully adjustable within the software.

It should also be noted that any fisheye (or wide angle) image for that matter can be "de-fished" and perspective corrected.

Shown in this example is a Canon 15mm Fisheye images before (as shot with fisheye) and after ( having been de-fished):

So to answer your question:

So does the Sigma 8mm, 10mm FE, Tokin or Nikkors listed have fisheye distortion?

The answer is yes! But as I have explained it is of no consequence.

The advantage of the fisheye lens is that it allows you to shoot a full 360x180 panorama with minimal shots.

Now there are variables, it comes down to the camera body being used and the size of it's sensor and then the (fisheye) lens being used and in the case of the Tokina 10-17mm at what zoom level.

Here is some common set ups:

Canon APS-C small sensor DSLR cameras (I.E: 500D, 50D etc) or Nikon DX small sensor DSLR cameras (I.E: D90, D300 etc).

When fitted with Sigma 8mm Fisheye: Shoot 4 around at 90 degree intervals with +4-7 degree tilt up to close the zenith (top) and than shoot handheld nadir (down). Or you can shoot 4 around at 90 degree intervals and 0 degree tilt with 1x Zenith at +90 degrees and 1x Nadir -90 (or hand held -90).

When used with a Sigma 10mm Fisheye or Nikkor 10.5mm or Tokina 10-17mm Zoom Fisheye at 10mm: Shoot 6 around at 60 degree intervals with -15 degrees tilt down (this will minimise the tripod) 1x +65 degrees zenith and 1x -90 nadir shot for patching. Or you can shoot 6 around at 0 degrees with 1x Zenith at +90 degrees and 1x Nadir -90 (or hand held -90).

Full size sensor cameras such as Canon 5D, 5DMKII, 1Ds etc or Nikon (FX Sensor) D700, D3, D3x or Sony's full size A900 DSLR:

Quote: Originally posted by EBMN on June-02-2009

---

And what is the difference between the two heads shown, aside from one has a cool read band?

It appears you are confirming that if you want to be able to look up and down with no distortion, you need to take multi-row cylindrical pano images, and that take a multi-row head?

---

You require a panohead that allows you to shoot off the 0 degree centre horizon. How far off depends on the Camera/Lens combination you are using.

The difference with the MrotatorTCPs and MrotatorUT or UM are basically this:

The MrotatorTCPs is made of solid steel and comes with the higher end rotator with lock and adjustable click stops along with a Manfrotto 323 quick release. This head is suitable to all DSLR cameras using a short lens (any fisheye) and will happily support the weight of a metal chassis body camera.

The MrotatorUM or UT is a light weight collapsible panohead that is designed for use with plastic bodied lower end DSLR cameras and for those who like to hike and carry minimal weight. This panohead also has 15 degree click stops on the upper arm. It is not suitable for metal chassis bodied cameras with more weight. Typically a good set up for this panohead would be say a Nikon D60 and Sigma 8mm or Nikkor 10.5mm fisheye or with Canon brand say a 400D and Sigma 4.5mm, 8mm, 10mm or Tokina 10-17 Zoom Fisheye.

The choice in rotators is the Rotator "M" base which has fixed click stops where as the Rotator "T" base is the same as supplied with the MrotatorTCPs and has adjustable click stops along with a locking knob to stop the position for absolute shooting. See this page for more information.

Regards, Smooth

As far as only buying one lens to do the job of two your only real option for this is the Tokina 10-17mm Zoom Fisheye where you would use the 17mm end of the zoom for normal wide angle shots.

Whilst Panoweaver can defish single images it is not the best at it, not by a long shot. Possibly you would look to other software for this.

There is little reason to take more shots than required to cover the full 360x180 unless you do so for security of having at least one image that has enough information for control points. Taking more images will not increase the final size of the panorama using the same lens at the same focal distance.

Should you use a full size sensor camera (I.E: D700, 5DMKII) you will capture more of the scene using the same lens in a single shot. Understand that certain lenses are purposely designed for small sensors and to use these on a full size sensor camera they must be modified by removing the sunshade/hood. The correct alternative to this is to buy a lens designed for the full size sensor. These lenses include the FX range for the Nikon. All Canon lenses are designed for full size DSLR cameras unless marked EF-S which are designed in the factory for the lesser APS-C small sensor cameras.

You are correct any final displayed panorama created with Easypano Studio will ultimately display in 72dpi. This though has no real effect on what you see as far as zoom is concerned. This will come down to the quality of the image and the size of the image in pixels being displayed. Understanding how to shoot for maximum clarity and focus along with selective sharpening will always sort the pros from the amateurs. 

The Auto-Zoom you see is the tour following a "Movie Track" that you can compile within Tourweaver. In fact you can write multiple movie tracks to auto guide people through your tour. This can include rotate to point, rotation direction and speed, zoom in and out, walk through effects etc.

The Easypano tour you point too is often referred to me for various reasons. Simply the images within this tour contain little colour information, meaning they are devoid of much of a colour spectrum. This allows for far greater compression making smaller file sizes. Exactly how these images were generated I'm not sure, but they have some serious prospective issues with this type of distortion.

Take this for example:

It looks like a "Hot Wheels" toy car!

Anyway, I hope this answers some of your questions.

Regards, Smooth

Smooth wrote:   Understanding how to shoot for maximum clarity and focus along with selective sharpening will always sort the pros from the amateurs. 

Smooth, could you expand on how to do this?
Thanks

People see blue sky or blank walls and do not expect to see details.  People see objects and expect to see detail.  The vase sitting on lamp table contains alot of color and shape information. 

Photoshop has a 'sharpening brush' found on the long vertical toolbar that maybe used for selective [vase on lamp table] sharpening.