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H
OW
DO
I L
OCATE
MY
C
AMERA
’
S
N
ODAL
P
OINT
?
Follow these steps and you will be able to easily locate the nodal point for any
camera and lens combination.
Simply put, the nodal point is the point inside your camera where the light rays
converge and flip over. When shooting an immersive panorama, it is necessary
to rotate about this point to eliminate the image mismatch caused by parallax
error.
Parallax error can be easily demonstrated by this simple experiment. Close one
eye and hold your index finger upright about six inches away from your open eye.
Rock your head from side to side. Notice how your finger moves with respect to
the background. This relative movement is due to the fact that you are not rotat-
ing your head around your eye’s nodal point, which is somewhere in the center of
your eyeball. Instead, you’re rotating about your spine which is several inches to
the rear and off to one side. It is this relative side-to-side motion that we will strive
to eliminate when setting up a camera for VR panoramas.
S
TEP
1: T
HE
E
ASY
P
ART
- T
HE
S
IDE
-
TO
-S
IDE
A
DJUSTMENT
Once the camera is fastened to the KiWi 2900 Pan Head, the center of the lens will
be directly over the pivot axis. No side-to-side adjustment will be needed.
Finding the Nodal Point
When using 3rd Party Lenses