As an amateur I've done several panoramas of landscapes and city views. I've mostly done it hand-held with a DSLR, with exposure lock and at the wide end of my zoom-lens. I do the stitching in Photoshop CS5 with the built-in panorama plugin. Given enough overlap I get good results with no weird seams.
What is it that a panoramic head and tripod add to the result? I know what it does and how it works (more or less), but I'm interested in how a series taken hand-held would improve when a tripod and panoramic head is used.
Answer
A big reason is that it just makes getting the shot sequence consistent and accurate. In general, you're looking to keep the vertical plane level through the whole sequence and move along the horizontal plane in smooth, even, steps. A panoramic head is simply going to make that easier to do with less effort and risk of a muffed shot at all kinds of focal lengths.
The other big reason, and most important, is parallax. Basically, as you rotate from a fixed position, the distance to the subject changes and that effects the final image. When doing a panorama, you want to find the nodal point of the lens, the point at which parallax disappears, and then rotate at that point. A good panorama head will allow you to do this by adjusting the slide position to the point where your rotation for the panorama won't suffer from parallax. Basically what it does is move the camera away from the point of rotation.
Anyways, if you're really serious into panorama, then this is the way to go. There are some great options out there.
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