Even though you have a 360° panning base you will have to level your shots on two seperate planes. For each individual shot of a panorama you will be forced to level your tripod legs as well as your ballhead. While doable this is extremely tedious and certainly not optimal for capturing sunrises or sunsets when time is of the essence. By using our PCL-1 Panning Clamp you have to level your ballhead ONCE, a process which can be completed in a matter of seconds, and you will be ready to take panoramas up to 360°.

An individual item, like a plate or a clamp, will always display stock status. But "kits" that are composed of multiple inventory items do not. We are working with our systems software provider to find a solution. In the meantime, please don't hesitate to call us or email us to determine stock status for any item.

For first-time pano shooters, we recommend starting simple. Most people may not have shot a parallax-free panorama before. Single-row panoramas are a great place to start.

What this entails is the use of a nodal slide, which allows you to position your camera/lens so that it pivots around the “no-parallax” point. This point has many names, depending on who you ask – for the sake of simplicity “no-parallax point” (NPP) works just fine. Really Right Stuff makes shooting panoramas as simple as possible using two pieces of gear, that make up our Pano-Elements Package. These are the panning clamp (PCL-1) and the nodal slide (mpr-cl II).

The PCL-1 can be mounted on a ballhead, directly to a tripod leveling base, or , using the dovetail adapter (pcl-dvtl) become a temporary addition to your existing QR clamp. By positioning the panning plane above the ball on your RRS ballhead, you are able to get a panning action parallel to the horizon line in seconds. This keeps the images from staggering when you stitch them together, minimizing the cropping that can rob you of your image resolution.

The MPR-CL II Nodal Slide has an integrated clamp that attaches to the dovetail on your RRS camera plate, providing a fore-aft slide which allows you to position your wide-angle or normal length lens at that NP Point. Using a RRS L-plate also allows you to shoot in portrait mode – further extending your image height and giving you even more resolution in a single row of images.

Whether you have a ballhead already, or are looking to build a complete support kit that is pano-ready, these two pieces of gear can be incorporated to give you the streamlined process that makes shooting panoramas fun and easy.