I would love to have the auto panorama feature of my Sony point & shoot on a DSLR!

For panoramas I would get one of the Sony's P&S - sure the quality is not as good as from dsl'r but the usability and speed is awesome

On a software note, there are some dedicated pano stitching programs which are possibly going to be easier and possibly better then Elements, such as PTgui; Photoshop CS4 does a great job.

You're usually only rotating around one axis, so as long as the nodal point goes through that axis you're fine. I suppose if you were planning on tilting the camera as well as rotating you'd need to tilt about the nodal point, as well. (I'm not talking about tilt as in tilt/shift here.) I wonder if a gimbal head would work for that. Someone here might know.

Great links and advice guys, thanks.

On the DIY heads: I can't believe you guys are missing something here, so I must be wrong but I only see nodal point adjustment on the X axis - why isn't it there for the Y axis too? It's only one more adjustability feature after all.

Also, i'm recommend scott kelby on D-town TV, who has a really good tutorial on how to shoot and process panos, especially the best way to do a handheld pano (thats saved me many times).

Here is the episode in question: http://kelbytv.com/dtowntv/2009/11/10/episode-23/

D-town is a great series focused on Nikon camera, and i would strongly recommend all users to check it out.

Thanks for the links, Rich. I've got them bookmarked now.

I think what Jonny says is important as near objects suffer the most from parallax. I have been playing with Pano's for a while and found this site explains it best: http://www.digicaminfo.btinternet.co.uk/panoramic5.htm
Also look on Flickr at the home made heads, I made my own very cheaply, just a little time and effort and a few mods along the way but it works fine for me. Here's the link: http://www.flickr.com/groups/hugin/discuss/72157612547458035/

Have fun and I hope you get some good results.

Okay here goes.

I think PS elements is fine. I think it won't do layers, though, so you may want to consider something like the gimp (free) to supplement it for when you need a layer editor. As to pano stitching, I wouldn't use it for that. Try hugin, another free program that keeps getting more polished. It's pretty easy to use right now and their website is a good place to learn about taking panos, including parallax error (which, by the way, is minimal on a normal tripod unless you're taking photos of nearby objects—things in your house, for example ;-). Parallax will show up as steps in objects that are closer to/further from the camera since the pano stitcher has to decide which distance is more important. Parallax can be fixed by rotating the camera around the nodal point of your lens. You can read more about it here http://www.sallyswebsite.com/cylindrical%20panoramas.html

I have no experience with interactive 360 panos.

More newbie questions...

I want to make taking panoramas part of my photography. I will be taking some interiors to sell my house, but after that the panoramas will be 99% landscapes.

I know this is an expensive hobby, but I do want to limit the outgoings on items that are not going to get frequent use, and even when they are I can't afford to throw big bucks around. My questions are about equipment and software:

I have PS Elements 7 which seems to stitch pictures together OK but stores them as files with an extention that ordinary viewers don't display (drat) - is there a reason for that or can I use a different package? Is Elements 7 generally OK for amateur use?

On panoramic heads and such; are they really necessary? I took an interior using a cheap little level which indexes round in 30° increments - it seemed to work OK although there was one step in a wooden beam that shouldn't be there. What is this business about parallax error - how does it manifest itself? I just think that given a tripod which allows landscape and portrait and has a scale to judge rotation between shots, ordinary landscape panoramas look 'OK'? I must be missing something. I love gadgets, but with heads and specialised lenses costing so much I can't really justify one. I hope to use my 18-105mm at 24mm where there are less distortions.

'Interactive' 360's - what do I need to do them? Special software? Are there any good sources of information on panoramic photography that I can learn from?

Thanks for any help given.