For no parallelax panoramas we will need six items. The equipment below uses all arca - swiss clamps and rails. Many manufacturers at a variety of price points support this standard. There are other standards but they are typically proprietary and not widely available.
- Some sort of a tripod. Below is a reasonably lightweight Surri used for travels.
- A leveller. Not strictly necessary if a ball head is used but handy for other applications
- An Arca-Swiss Clamp for the nodal slide
- A 360 degree panning base. If not included on the ball head then a leveller will be required
- Arca-Swiss Nodal Slide. A 180 mm or more works with most lenses on full frame or APS-c DSLRs. 140 mm or shorter is required for short wide angle and / or micro 4/3 and smaller mirrorless cameras.
- An "L" bracket (Figures 2 & 3) for your camera. An "L" bracket allows photographs in either portrait or landscape mode. Portrait mode is recommended for panoramas.
- Equipment to level the rig. Some nodal slides and clamps are sold with bubble levels. The less expensive ones may not be accurate. After market bubble levels mounted in the flash hot shoe are available. Some cameras have internal levels.
Figure 1
Below is an illustration of a panorama rig using the above equipment. Notice all rotaters, slides, and clamps must have calibration marks. The camera is set up on the "No Parallelax Point".
Figure 2
Here is an example of afloan "L" bracket and clamp in landscape mode. Center marks are important.
Figure 3
An illustration of a clamp.
Figure 4
An illustration of a ball head on a 360 degree rotator.
Figure 5
Figure 6
