Panamatic

I bought a Panamatic on Saturday at Henry’s. It’s a very simple panorama mount, with a large level, and fixed 30° click stops.

It works extremely well, and is quick to set up. The image below (larger image if you follow the link) was taken with my Cybershot P100, and stitched with hugin:

I’ve highlighted the overlap between the images with a bright blue background, and only cropped the image for width. The Panamatic gives very even and level results.

There are a couple of downsides: you can’t correct for lens nodal point location (thus giving woozy effects if you used it for an animated cylindrical panorama), and the click stops are fixed at 30°, so you had better use a near standard lens. Apart from that, it seems pretty well made, and easily worth $40 for hassle-reduction alone.