some panorama portrait orientation advice please

Nice website and photos Will. It's nice to see a photo site
that actually works and loads quick. Most of the one's I've
seen either lock up or take forever to load.

Actually, to be accurate, you don't swivel around the "nodal point", but you swivel around the "entrance pupil". The term "nodal point" is very often misunderstood and misused.

Thanks Algi - one of the reasons that I decided to stick with using it. Been pretty pleased with the load times, the chaps at viewbook clearly have got some things right. Works on the iPhone & iPad too even though it's largely flash based!

I'm sure you are correct, guess I have been mis-using the term! But hopefully not mis-understood...

Will, thanks for that info , I also have bought a pano head, albeit not as expensive as the Manfrotto one,to see what the result is as I want to take portrait orientation image with the depth of field starting almost at the edge of the image which means panoramic stitching to get the "normal" landscape width and from what I can under stand needs the entrance pupil [formally referred to by one and all as the nodal point]above the pivot point. I have yet to try it out as it is a Man down the chimbly thing.
That would be interesting to see please do post or let us know a link , [stick on flckr for a while then pull them thats what I do when I want to share or sell something for a short period.]
Your website is very nice and very easy to navigate congrats.
it makes mine very clunky
www.countrystudio.co.uk
Alistair

Apologies for resurrecting this thread but I would like to say thanks to you all for the inspiration to have a go at a panorama.

My first attempt, using Microsoft ICE, was a panoramic view of North Guildford at dawn. Taken yesterday at around 8am using a K-7 with DA55-300 @ about 100mm using a standard tripod head to take two rows of shots roughly spaced at 7.5 degrees.

It was a bit dark. I was rather hoping that the sky was going to be a bit clearer but it was useful experience and I also got some well needed exercise lugging my heavy tripod up this hill.

Microsoft ICE stitched them together well although on the full sized image you can spot the odd, just slightly, misaligned join.

Here is a small version, cropped & edited to brighten it up a bit:

[IMG]http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w20/GlynM/Misc/Panorama-01-c1.jpg[/IMG]

I have also uploaded the full unedited version, a stitch of 42 shots, onto Photosynth here but be warned if you have not already got it you will be prompted to download & install Microsoft Silverlight to be able to explore the image and I guess this means it will only work on a windows PC.

With this full sized image on Photosynth you can zoom in and pan around. We have had lots of fun searching for things like clocks on buildings and familiar places like PC world, Comet, Guildford station and even a glimpse of the cricket ground.

I'm now well encouraged to have ago at a few more but I think I'll have to wait until we get some sunny days although the search for well placed local hill tops has already started .

Thanks again for the inspiration,

Glyn

Edit: surprisingly I got it to work on my Mac Mini where I was also prompted to install Microsoft Silverlight.