I thought there must be something wrong with my Manfrotto head because it vibrates and seems flimsy to me. To my suprise the reviewer found that all of the 3 heads he reviewed exhibited "sag", which when bad enough requires the photographer to shim the camera on the bracket. It's pretty unbeliveable that you can pay so much money for a pan head and have this problem.
Really Right Stuff (RRS) has a panorama head that looks nice. I wonder if it has the sag problem
After some false starts I now understand how to setup the Manfroto 303SPH Panorama head
Here are some pictures showing how to setup the camera base plate holder:
How to setup Camera Base Plate Holder - Click for Larger
Rear View of Assembly - Click for Larger
Front View of Assembly - Click for Larger
Pictures showing the base plate attached to the camera:
Notice how I've chosen to line up the white line with a line in the bottom of the body. The important thing is to remember where you line it up so that you can record the 303SPH settings for each lens used for panoramas once it's center point and nodal points are found.
Base Plate Attached to Camera - Click for Larger View
Base Plate Attached to Camera Close Up- Click for Larger View
Pictures showing camera attached to the 303SPH:
Camera Attached to 303SPH, Front View - Click for Larger
Camera Attached to 303SPH, Rear View
Camera Attached to 303SPH shows tripod head and top of legs - Click for Larger
Find and record the center and nodal point settings for each lens you want to use with your panorama head (and for zooms I believe this will be focal length specific). In addition determine the degrees you'll use in rotations in both vertical and horizontal directions.
I'm testing out my lens setups in my apartment and carefully recording the settings for each. By pretesting and recording a lens setup, time in the field can be used to focus on the shot.
Recorded settings are not helpful unless you put the 303SPH together the same way each time. The above pictures detail the head setup I use. Heres what I have so far:
- 12-24mm Nikkor f/4 DX - set to smallest focal length 12mm
- * Camera Base Plate: 52.3mm - for center point
- Top Rail (attached to camera base plate holder): 81.5mm for nodal point
- Bottom Rail (attached to head): 44mm for center point
- Horizontal Degrees: 20
- Vertical Degrees: Not Tested
- 28mm Nikkor f/1.4
- * Camera Base Plate: *needs to be remeasured* for center point
- Top Rail (attached to camera base plate holder): 73mm for nodal point
- Bottom Rail (attached to head): 49.3mm for center point
- Horizontal Degrees: 20
- Vertical Degrees: tested at 30, but had to hand set control points for 2 sets, I will test again at 20
* I align the camera base plate white line with the indentation in the bottom of the Nikon D2X body closest to the tripod mount.
Nikon D2X camera body bottom and 303SPH camera base plate, Larger View
Some Other Info:
Kekus thread on Manfrotto 303SPH compliactions
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