Nodal point alignment - what is the best techique?

[John Doogan]

I am having trouble getting good results using Sony 7r4/laowa 12mm/ReallyRightStuff pano head combination. I would like to try aligning the nodal point more accurately. Does anyone have any good suggestions for the best techniques/tutorials for doing this?  And also for getting the extra shots to remove the tripod head from the bottom of the 360 image.  Much appreciated, John Doogan.

[Dr. Jon]

One nodal point is always one focal length from the sensor. Your camera has a mark for the sensor location.  Use a mm ruler to put the sensor one focal length from the axis of rotation of your gimbal.  It get close if not right on and it works for me.

[John Houghton]

On Wednesday, August 18, 2021 at 4:31:14 PM UTC+1 jlw...@aceweb.com wrote:

One nodal point is always one focal length from the sensor. Your camera has a mark for the sensor location.  Use a mm ruler to put the sensor one focal length from the axis of rotation of your gimbal.  It get close if not right on and it works for me.

You should rotate the camera about the entrance pupil of the lens rather than either of the two nodal points. Fortunately, most of the commonly used methods of finding the so-called no-parallax point do succeed on finding the correct point!  There are many tutorials and videos available if you care to search on line.  E.g. you might find mine at http://www.johnhpanos.com/epcalib.htm .

John

[Erik Krause]

Am 18.08.2021 um 17:31 schrieb Dr. Jon:

> One nodal point is always one focal length from the sensor. Your camera has
> a mark for the sensor location. Use a mm ruler to put the sensor one focal
> length from the axis of rotation of your gimbal.

This is a misconception caused by using the wrong term. It's not either
nodal point to rotate the camera around in order to avoid parallax. It's
the center of the entrance pupil, also called no-parallax-point. This
point is completely independent from the nodal points.

--
Erik Krause
http://www.erik-krause.de