Panoramic Earth forms Partnership with Aaduki

Panoramic Earth recently formed a partnership with Aaduki insurance offering both professional and amateur camera insurance through their services. In addition to a range of camera insurance and film equipment policies, Aaduki also offer Public Liability, Employer Liability (EL) and Public Indemnity (PI) insurance, a must for any professional. For the amateur, having insurance gives you peace of mind when taking your photography gear out for a shoot.

More about the different insurance policies can be found on the Aaduki website, or by reading these articles:

• Professional Camera Insurance, PI and EL
• Amateur Camera Insurance

We at Panoramic Earth are very excited about this opportunity, Aaduki is a strong and reputable brand and we are delighted to be associated with them.

Canon EF Lenses - Change your Photography

Canon produce a vast range of EF lenses for their EOS cameras, making them an excellent choice for anyone looking to buy a new digital camera. Not only that, the range continues to expand and grow, allowing budding photographers also to explore new areas of photography. Canon EF lenses are among the best in the world, they were the first to successfully commercialize Ultrasonic motor (USM) lenses, fast, silent and precise autofocus. Many of the lenses also have image stabilization (IS) or hybrid IS technology. This provides compensation for hand-shake in low-light, slow exposure settings, making photography even easier.

Canon EF Lenses

This video below provides an excellent introductory tutorial into Canon EF lenses.

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Before starting out on selecting a Canon lens, it is always important to ask what kind of photography you want to do. However, whether you are interested in wide angle, scenic shots, macro work or need zoom for wildlife photography, Canon have got it covered.

The Canon EF lenses are identified by several factors:

• Focal Length – given in mm, with low numbers providing wide angle images and higher focal lengths providing greater magnification of long-range objects, but with a narrower field of view. The Canon EF range is very diverse, covering 8mm fisheye lenses through to 1200mm lenses.
• Aperture – marked as f/1.0 or similar. The number indicates the lowest setting at which that lens will work. A lower f value indicates that the lens will allow more light in and therefore work in lower light conditions.
• Macro – these EF lenses are specifically designed for very close up work, and the work best for these kind of images. So, if your thing is photographing details of stitching or capturing bug-eyes and mushroom gills, then this is the thing to look out for.
• USM – The lens has an ultrasonic motor for focussing. These motors are faster and quieter than other types of auto-focus motors and consume les power.
• IS – EF lenses marked IS have image stabilization technology built in.
• DO lens – These EF lenses have special Diffractive Optics glass and are usually smaller, lighter and perform better than non-DO lenses. Be prepared to pay for them.
• L-Series – the EF lens ‘Luxury’ series, top of the line, with the best optical qualities and build, and with a price tag to match. They all have DO lens technology. Unless you have a lot of money, are mad about your photography or a professional, the L-series are what most of us drool over from a distance.

So there is a brief overview of lens nomenclature. The best way to choose a lens is to find a friend and see if they will be willing to let you use their kit. If you have that kind of friend be very grateful. Otherwise, make sure you can try them out in the shop, even have an attendant stand with you as you shoot some frames on your own body from the shop door. Of course, often budget plays an unfortunately limiting role in the lenses we can buy.

If you are buying a new lens, consider the kit lens, if it is of good quality. These often cover the range of circumstances most of us are likely to find ourselves in. The EF 24-105mm IS USM lens I have covers pretty much all I need for most things. The quality of the images has been great, and the IS has helped greatly in photographing moving objects like birds from a boat.

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Part 3 - Panorsaurus Head Review

Previously on PanoramicEarth (as so many US series start off with any episode before immediately switching to a bunch of ads) – we covered some of the differences between the Panosaurus panoramic head and the Manfrotto MN303 panoramic head. Neither alone fully met our needs for a light weight system that could be quickly packed away and transported with minimum setup time at a new location.

System Combination:
Thus an amalgam of the two was used, providing a more lightweight (and cheaper) system than upgrading to a Manfrotto MN303SPH system. The combination worked, in a ‘thigh-bone connected to the hip-bone’ fashion, thus:

• Manfrotto 055PRO tripod with Assy support plate connected to-
• Manfrotto 438 Compact Leveling Head connected to-
• Manfrotto 300 Pan Rotation Unit (allows ‘click stop’ rotation required) connected to-
• Manfrotto 3/8” to ¼” thread adaptor connected to-
• Panosaurus head.

In this way the whole of the panoramic head combination was easily detached from the tripod in one easy maneuver and stashed in a backpack along with the camera for easy transport. All that was needed was to simply slide the camera off the horizontal arm and pack that away with the Panosaurus plate still attached to it. Setup time at a new location took less than a minute including leveling of the camera. The Panosaurus does have a base plate marked with regular divisions for rotation, but I wanted to be able to rely on constantly having the same rotation angle every time as this made post processing easier.

Yes, there are other systems available, but for a relatively cheap option, having already invested in the Manfrotto 303 gear, this seemed a reasonable way to progress to be able to shoot 360 spherical images if required. It would be interesting to obtain a King Pano system to have a look at as well.

Thus far this new system has been used to shoot over 600 panoramic images in Paris, Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Rome, Barcelona and Bratislava. The results of all this mad rushing around is currently being processed and will be added to the PanoramicEarth.com city tours in due course.

Part 2 - Panorsaurus Head Review

The Panosaurus, designed and manufactured by Greg Rubottom, is a light weight self-assembly system and detailed instructions. It can be used to take both cylindrical and spherical panoramic images. It is made of light weight materials (aluminium upright arm and PVC for the other parts), and therefore is unsuitable for cameras over 1.5kg in weight. Both Red Door and Tawbaware have written reviews on the product. It is a fully adjustable system, very flexible and light. That said we have found the following limitations with the system. On the whole though, for the money the Panosaurus is a light weight, durable, flexible and relatively cheap system for taking spherical panoramic images. It is well worth considering as a possible system, but be aware of some of the limitations.

Looseable Leveling Indicator
The Panosaurus does have it’s own level monitoring system. This is a spirit level held by a magnet to the centre of the base arm. Obviously, this is removable, and the user must take care not to loose it. In our hands, the magnet quickly came detached from the level bubble as the two components are simply glued together. It would be better if this could be permanently fixed to the unit somehow. Most people will use an additional leveling unit on their tripod to make life easier, and often these will have their own spirit level in them.

Tripod Attachment Issues
The Panosaurus screws directly onto the tripod head. If you are wanting to detach the system quickly then you will need to combine it with another system that allows for rapid detachment from the tripod. For our uses this was essential, as we were quickly moving form one location to another, often shooting over 20 locations a day. With the Manfrotto system this is taken care of by their own quick release mechanisms and attachments. However, most of the Manfrotto gear has 3/8” threads.

The Panosauraus only has a ¼” thread hole in the base for attaching to a tripod. If you want to attach to a 3/8” bolt then you will need another adaptor. It would be better if the system came with a 3/8” thread and contained an small screw-in adaptor that could convert this to a ¼” thread if needed. That way it would be able to fit all accessories and tripods without having to purchase other equipment. We needed to attach this to the Manfrotto 438 ball leveling system, and therefore had to buy an additional thread converter.

Click Stop versus Full Adjustable Head Rotation
The Panosaurus has not ‘click-stop’ as you move the head round. If you want to use a click-stop system then you will need to add it on. Again you may need a thread adapter to do this. We know the number of shots needed for our use, that this would always be consistent and wanted something that would always align in the same manner. The click stop method of taking panoramic shots also helps in low light conditions, or where the camera has had to be raised above head-height when it would not be possible to see the markings on the base plate easily.

Horizontal Arm Indicator
The vertical arm has a groove in the top to help align the horizontal arm to the required angle. It would be an improvement if this indicator groove progressed down the vertical arm a short way, and was painted white.

In the next post we will show how we combined the Panosaurus with some Manfrotto components to suit our needs of a light weight spherical imaging system that could quikly be packed away.

Panosauraus Panoramic Head Review #1

Manfrotto Panoramic Head

Up till now, most of the images on Panoramic Earth had been taken using a Manfrotto (MN) 303 panoramic head system. The MN303 can only be used for cylindrical panoramic images, but not those that can pan up and down – spherical panoramic images. The MN system has proved very reliable in every situation we have found ourselves – and this includes from snow-covered mountain tops to volcanoes and caves. It is made of metal throughout, thus is very durable, and can hold quite heavy equipment. The release system to mount it onto the tripod is all a quick release locking system allowing it to be packed away rapidly, knowing that it can be re-assembled just as fast in exactly the same nodal point configuration next time round. The price you pay for this is weight. When considering to upgrade for spherical images this became, as well as the cost, a major consideration. For the work done in cities and on rugged terrain saving weight makes for happier backs.

With this in mind we looked at a number of other options. including the Panosaurus, which is promoted as a low weight, low cost option - an ‘Affordable Fully Spherical Panoramic Head’ and available in the UK through Red Door VR Ltd.. We have now used this system to shoot over 300 panoramic images in both city and outdoor situations.

In the next couple of posts we will look at various aspects of our experience in using the Panosaurus panoramic head, snags encountered and observations made.