HansKeesom wrote:

Hi Jeramy,
Zenith can be difficult if there is one color only. Other then that it is fine.

First, thank you for your quick reply!!

But, do I manually have to take the zenith (with the same idea I mentioned above for the nadir), or will panogear do it for me?

For the nadir shot, I would stand where the tripod and take the picture from as close to the same spot as I could eye, but it obviously won't be perfect.  It should still work rather well, correct?

Mediavets,

We are purchasing a new camera for work and haven't decided on a specific model yet.  We have many irregularly shaped rooms to photograph, so a camera that would do well with close and distant shots would be best.  Going for high quality as speed isn't as much of an issue. 

Any recommendations you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Jeramy wrote:

Okay.  I've purchased the Panogear from Kolor.com for my head and I am purchasing the Canon EOS Rebel T2i camera.

And what lens do you propose to use for shooting those interior spherical panos?

Can anyone give me their recommendations on the best tripod to use with these?  I'm looking for something with a small footprint as I'll be doing sphere panoramas with these.

My merlin mount - not soureced from Kolor - came with a basic tripod.

The Manfrotto (Bogen in some markets) tripods are popular.
....

By the way where are you located? This may affect/determine equipment recommendations.

Jeramy wrote:

I'm in the US.  We're not planning on purchasing a lens for interior shots are we prefer quality over speed.

So you are planning to use the standard 18-55mm IS kit zoom lens?

The smaller FOV of longer focal length lenses means you are going to be processing a LOT more data than if you used a fisheye lens. Fisheye lenses also have much greater depth of field.

Also you will of course have more seams between images and hence more chance of stitching errors, not to mention the challenge of 'featureless' images.

Jeramy wrote:

I'm in the US.  We're not planning on purchasing a lens for interior shots are we prefer quality over speed.

sounds clever - but what does it mean?

In terms of "Quality" i suggest the use of a fullframe camera with 21/25MPx and a 15 or 16mm fisheye. You get about 100MPx in excellent quality.
Which means to be able displaying a pano excellently on even very big screens and have plenty of overhead for zooming.
And you need just 6 images + Zenith and Nadir.

As Andrew said already: using a fisheye you not likely have featureless images - which you usually have using a non-fe.

If you use a crop-camera i suggest the use of a 10,5mm Nikon fisheye. It´s good in optical quality and you need 6 + 2 shots also for getting around 50MPx.
That´s ok for the average work.

In other words: you wouldn´t get "better quality" usig a non-fisheye - unless you buy an exorbitant fine lens from Zeiss and use fullframe. But then the effort grows
dramatically . . using a Zeiss 21mm for example you need about 24 shots on a crop-camera if i remember well. Stitching becomes much more challenging because you
inavoidably will have featureless/monochrome images of walls and ceilings when working indoors.

best, Klaus