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Hi Pentaxian friends.
I know that many of you like panoramic images, composed with several images. There are great software to stitch the images together and there are several pano heads available. They usually cost about $100.00 and more. I made my own pano head, or should I say assembled my own pano head. I you search on Ebay for "Macro focusing Rail" you will find several vendors located in China that sell the same unit that Adorama sells for $179.95, but you will pay around $35.00 to $50.00. with free shipping
I know that many of you like panoramic images, composed with several images. There are great software to stitch the images together and there are several pano heads available. They usually cost about $100.00 and more. I made my own pano head, or should I say assembled my own pano head. I you search on Ebay for "Macro focusing Rail" you will find several vendors located in China that sell the same unit that Adorama sells for $179.95, but you will pay around $35.00 to $50.00. with free shipping
Then search for "Flash Bracket" and again vendors from China have them for less than $10.00. and free shipping.
Bend the flash bracket 90 degrees and use the oversized thumb screw, supplied with the rail, to attach it to the rail, and voila...a perfect pano head that is also a macro focusing rail unit. Now you need another oversized thumb screw to attach the camera to the bracket. If your flash bracket is like the one above, use the screws supplied to attach the camera.
One big advantage is that you can use the rail for macro focusing, and by attaching the bent flash bracket, it becomes a pano head.
The pictures below show the completed unit and I will put it against any pano head on the market.
Thank you for reading,
Yvon Bourque
One big advantage is that you can use the rail for macro focusing, and by attaching the bent flash bracket, it becomes a pano head.
The pictures below show the completed unit and I will put it against any pano head on the market.
Thank you for reading,
Yvon Bourque
8 comments:
Hello Yvon, that's a very interresting work, thank you for sharing !
But is it easy to bend the flash rail ? Is it in plastic or metal ?
Arnaud
PS : Yvon is a usual name here in France, are you French ?
Arno,
It's easy to bend because it aluminum. If you are not sure of your mechanical abilities, any workshop around your town can do this in about 5 minutes, and if they are a respectable place, they'll do it for free.
As for my name, Yes I'm French, but with a difference...I'm FrenchCanadian :)
Ok, merci pour tes infos je vais surement me laisser tenter, l'idée est vraiment sympa.
En espérant que je puisse y monter un 645d un jour...
This is a good cheap option vs some of the more stout pre-fabbed heads.
Some issues i see are it seems bulky, and I doubt it's as sturdy as a more robust head. Then again, you get a macro rail out of it as well as a pano head, so bulk is somewhat offset.
For most people though, this will work pretty well, although it adds more hassle to getting the settings since there is more variability and no wiki database for the settings.
As a note, the 645N and perhaps 645D have secondary tripod mounts, making the L bracket unnessary. For those cameras, the macro rail (any strong macro rail) will work really well, and without the added movement of the L bracket!
Yvon I did something similar but I got a free L-Bracket from a friend (Same thing as your bent flash bracket) and attached it to a longer Quick shoe for my Vanguard SBH 300 and that works just fine as well.
Cheers!
SAlut Yvon, voici un premier test avec des photos du 645d, existe aussi en fr. :
http://en.akihabaranews.com/49635/review/review-pentax-645d-the-other-way-of-shooting-photos
Very cool... just now I have been searching for good pano heads as well as a macro focusing rail for macro-panos! This setup fit both my needs in one go! I've a huge project coming up that requires me to do various pano shots...
A question though, how does one use it to ensure no parallax errors? (Apologies since I have never used a pano head before)
(I rarely go online, so if you can email me at damofo@pinoypentaxian.com I would greatly appreciate it...
Looks good but none of the photos seem to show it possible for the camera to rotate around the "non-parallax error point". Rotated vertically, the camera appears to simply rotate around the camera-tripod mount hole; rotated horizontally, the mounting slide doesn't seem to be long enough for rotation to occur over afore-mentioned NPEP.
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