Samyang 12mm zenith

[Jakub Bauke (Bauke Group)]

Hi,

Could someone advise me whether when taking a 360° panorama with a Samyang 12mm f/2.8 lens on full frame and taking 6 exposures with a Nodal Ninja R1 head, a 12.5 degree upward tilt is enough to avoid the need to add or retouch the zenith?

Jakub.

[Erik Krause]

Likely not. I just opened one of my projects with that lens on a Sony
A7R4, and I had to set pitch in PTGui to at least 14.5° in order to
fully cover the zenith.

I usually shoot 6° to 7° down to cover most of the nadir outside my
tripod head, then (at least) one shot 50° up for the zenith hole. 50°
because then I always have the horizon in the image. Straight (90°) up
confuses the orientation sensor and in case of a blank sky there is no
possibility for control points.

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

[Jakub Bauke (Bauke Group)]

Hi Erik,

And I want the opposite.

Some say 12.5 degrees is enough, others, like you, say more is needed. Have you used the Samyang 12mm f/2.8 ED AS NCS fisheye lens specifically? I've tested it so far with an NN R10 head tilted 7.5 degrees upwards with 4 exposures, and it's close - the hole at the zenith is small.  I'm wondering if buying an R1 with a maximum 12.5 will be enough. 6 exposures will minimally help with stitching the zenith. Of course, the nadir will be quite a significant drop, so I'll also need to take a shot exactly vertically downwards.

J.

[John Houghton]

Jakub, You might try rotating the camera to make use of the larger fov available along the diagonal of the frame.  I only have available a sample image found online, so cannot do a proper test, but it shows almost full coverage with 6 shots around.  The overlap may be minimal. in places.

John

[Erik Krause]

Am 02.02.2026 um 00:15 schrieb Jakub Bauke (Bauke Group):

> Have you used the Samyang 12mm f/2.8 ED AS NCS fisheye lens
> specifically?

Exactly that one.

I tried again with a new project. I Loaded 6 images portrait
orientation, spaced them with yaw 60°, pitched them upwards and watched
the zenith in the Detail Viewer. I needed to go to 14.75° to fully close
the zenith hole. At 14.70 there is still a small hole, which affects
blending.

I also tried to roll the images in order to use the diagonal. The best I
could achieve was 5.5° up at 33° roll. At 12.5° up you can close the
hole with a roll from 19° to 39°.

I personally would avoid the corners of the image, since they are
noticeable less sharp and also suffer from some uncorrectable chromatic
aberration. That's why I usually use those images with a circular crop
touching the short sides and plenty of overlap. A shooting pattern
without a zenith shot would be too risky for me.

[Erik Krause]

Am 02.02.2026 um 22:20 schrieb 'Erik Krause' via PTGui Support:

> I Loaded 6 images portrait orientation

I forgot to mention: I used the PTGui default lens correction parameters
for that lens.