Nadir Adapter

[cellarman]

Hi

Has anyone out there tried the new Nadir Adapter for NN3 and NN5 series Nodal Ninja panorama heads. Would be interested to see some results with this kit.

Cheers

Brian

[James]

Re: Nadir Adapter

Yes me to

I am currently considering purchasing one, am using D200, NN3, EZ-leveller & Nikon 10.5mm.

Does anyone have any sample images they could show taken with the Nadir adaptor? I am currently using a tripod cap logo at present but would love to be able to get this nadir thing sorted

[hindenhaag]

Re: Nadir Adapter

Hi Guys,

what tripods are you using? I am testing both NN3 and NN5. The adaptor sets a lot of torque to the equipment and the camera will move down. To re-level, I would recommend to use an EZ-Leveller II and a 2/3 way bubble leveler in the cameras flash shoe. Then it is easy to re-level.

The NN has to be set in 90° to two legs of the tripod. As DennisS advised, you have to be aware that a long center column may interfere even alpha masked. Use a short center column and a tripod with stiff center column attachment.

I used a Manfrotto 055ProB for my panos a long time, but with the swivel the center column moves. The problem of a little bit unstable center column was reported before with the manfrotto by Pros.

Actually, I now use Gitzo GT1541 for NN3/R1 for light weight and travel and Feisol CT3372LV for NN5 D3 Nikkor 14-24/f2.8 without center column ( interchangeable plate ) or with center column and monopod for pole pano. Rock solid.

Use the legs spread out and do some test shots, use for the best wireless control to get your body out of the pics. Turning out the swivel, turn the equipment holding it on the hight of the rotator knob. Before turning, fix the rotator with both, fixing knob and detend plunger. Turn around, fix the swivel screw, take shot, IMMEDIATELY turn the nadir adaptor back and fix the screw before you do anything else.

I leave my legs, the two in front, spread out and do not set them to 90° in vertical. BOTH, NN5 AND NN3 WITH NADIR ADAPTOR TURNED OUT MIGHT BEND OVER >85° EVEN WITH SPREAD OUT LEGS. That's Physics, isn't it? Take care of your equipment.

Conclusion: Great addition to the NN products. Easier to use than old way 2 nadir visa versa + handheld shot. Freedom to get nadir in long exposure situations. Saves one shot visa versa, think of bracketing.

Accessories required: for my personal opinion Ez-Leveller II, 2/3way bubble leveller, wireless remote control

TRIPOD WITH STABLE CENTER COLUMN.

I will send pics later.

Regards

Heinz

BTW Brian, what camera lens combi do u use?

[hindenhaag]

Re: Nadir Adapter

Important addition:

only re-level the bubble leveller on the camera in both bubbles of the 2-way leveller. Do not think of the one on the rotator. This will stay off center. But this doesn't matter because we only have to re-level the camera.

I use a cord to control the repositioning of the tripod to NPP and a coin below the tripod before moving.

Success

Heinz

[hindenhaag]

Re: Nadir Adapter

For Users of NN3 with nadir adaptor:

You have to reduce the LRS by 6 mm, because there is an offset of 6 mm of the vertical rail to the important corner of the nadir adaptor to lower rail. You will see once you have mounted the vertical rail of the NN3 to the adaptor. This is the measurement for my equipment NN3 MKII. Test your own equipment to be sure about this.

Heinz

[DennisS]

Re: Nadir Adapter



The Nadir shot is in the center, the patch shot has the tripod off to the left. Note the orientation of the pano head to the tripod. That is critical to using the swivel correctly.

Here is a quick tutorial on processing the images with PTGui. http://www.dlsphoto.net/Tutorials/NadirPatch2/index.htm

There is a lot of side load with the camera swiveled out. I use a D300 + 10.5mm lens and found that the NN3 lower rail is not really up to the task with the D300. The NN3 is not designed for larger DSL cameras in the first place. I use Manfrotto 055x series of tripods. Neither the standard or pivoting center column models flex when the camera is swung out. Most vertical movement comes from flex in the lower arm of the pano head or a leveler. Whatever tripod you get, order a short center column.

A lot of people do not use any leveling device. It is easy to adjust the tripod legs in order to level your rig. You do not need to be perfectly level anyway. With the camera swung out, any vertical movement should be compensated for in your stitching software. The point of the swivel is to make capturing the Nadir patch shot as easy and quick as possible. When you start adjusting your rig between the patch shot and the rest of your panorama, you are adding more steps to the capture process. The ideal steps are to take the Nadir, swing the camera out, slide your rig over, take the patch shot, swivel your camera back and off you go to the next panorama.

Look at the swivel as another step in your process. Try it without the leveler to see if that works for you. If you find that vertical movement of the camera is causing you more time in stitching, then relevel the rig between shots. You should not have to mess with the tripod legs. If you are, then you are not correctly set up in the first place.

[cellarman]

Re: Nadir Adapter

Hi Guys,

what tripods are you using? I am testing both NN3 and NN5. The adaptor sets a lot of torque to the equipment and the camera will move down. To re-level, I would recommend to use an EZ-Leveller II and a 2/3 way bubble leveler in the cameras flash shoe. Then it is easy to re-level.

The NN has to be set in 90° to two legs of the tripod. As DennisS advised, you have to be aware that a long center column may interfere even alpha masked. Use a short center column and a tripod with stiff center column attachment.

I used a Manfrotto 055ProB for my panos a long time, but with the swivel the center column moves. The problem of a little bit unstable center column was reported before with the manfrotto by Pros.

Actually, I now use Gitzo GT1541 for NN3/R1 for light weight and travel and Feisol CT3372LV for NN5 D3 Nikkor 14-24/f2.8 without center column ( interchangeable plate ) or with center column and monopod for pole pano. Rock solid.

Use the legs spread out and do some test shots, use for the best wireless control to get your body out of the pics. Turning out the swivel, turn the equipment holding it on the hight of the rotator knob. Before turning, fix the rotator with both, fixing knob and detend plunger. Turn around, fix the swivel screw, take shot, IMMEDIATELY turn the nadir adaptor back and fix the screw before you do anything else.

I leave my legs, the two in front, spread out and do not set them to 90° in vertical. BOTH, NN5 AND NN3 WITH NADIR ADAPTOR TURNED OUT MIGHT BEND OVER >85° EVEN WITH SPREAD OUT LEGS. That's Physics, isn't it? Take care of your equipment.

Conclusion: Great addition to the NN products. Easier to use than old way 2 nadir visa versa + handheld shot. Freedom to get nadir in long exposure situations. Saves one shot visa versa, think of bracketing.

Accessories required: for my personal opinion Ez-Leveller II, 2/3way bubble leveller, wireless remote control

TRIPOD WITH STABLE CENTER COLUMN.

I will send pics later.

Regards

Heinz

BTW Brian, what camera lens combi do u use?

Heinz

My rig consists of NikonD90 & D2, 10.5 fisheye, NN3, Ez leveler & Velbron DV-7000. Pretty standard set up really. The Velbron is a video tripod and as such is quite heavy, but very, very stable., however a real pain to carry any distance. Look forward to your pics.

Brian

[hindenhaag]

Re: Nadir Adapter

Hi,

I have set up a panorama with D200, Nikkor 10.5, NN3 and Nadir Adaptor. The set includes 2 videos, one about preparing, alpha mask nadir and stitching the panorama with PTGuiPro and PS CS4. The second one explains the set up of the rig and shows the effect of the nadir adaptor.

Two maps include the pics of the pano - for those who want to play around on their own - and the pics of the D200, 10.5, NN3, Ez-LevellerII Gitzo GT 1541T

The workflow in the video shows my own decision to create a panorama, there are many ways to Rome and might be that others do it in another way. Same with using the EZ-LevellerII, I can do it as well without it and use the tripod legs to adjust, I simply prefer to use the leveller instead of adjusting tripods legs.

I have set this up cause there have been questions around the nadir adaptor, stitching, and alpha masks. Just to try to give "newbies" a help to start up. Not to start a lot of threads with those who know how to do it. Camera orientation "on'' "off" etc.

http://web.me.com/hindenhaag/filechu...aptorVideo.zip Video

http://web.me.com/hindenhaag/filechute/D200_10.zip Pics of pano

http://web.me.com/hindenhaag/filechu...dirAdaptor.zip Video

http://web.me.com/hindenhaag/filechu...dirAdaptor.zip Pics of Set Up

Think it helps a little bit,

regards

Heinz

[John Houghton]

Re: Nadir Adapter

Heinz, You did well in describing the general process of using the nadir adapter in the videos. Newbies should find them very useful. However, I do have reservations about your stitching workflow, and I cannot agree that your final result is a "very fine stitch" - there being several stitching errors at the nadir. It's quite easy to get a flawless stitch with your images, but I will observe your request not to get involved with side issues and leave it at that.

John

[hindenhaag]

Re: Nadir Adapter

Thx John,

I will make a review. I was glad to get it on the road. Send me an IM if you like.

Heinz

[cellarman]

Re: Nadir Adapter

Heinz

Thank you so much for that tutorial at least I know that the product is worth the investment. I normally do a hand held nadir shot and providing I get my body as far away as possible then PTGUI can cope with the stitching. However I am now trying HDR and for this a hand held is not appropriate.

Also as an experiment I loaded all your images into PTGUI and stitched them all at the same time. The result was quite surprising. All I had to do was a little bit of leveling and out popped a very reasonable panorama with few errors. If this works every time then it will be a great time saver.

BTW are you using PTGUI or PTGUI Pro ?

Many thanks
Brian

[hindenhaag]

Re: Nadir Adapter

Brian,

It is a pleasure to do this. By placing the pics I like to give people a chance to test around with them in Ptgui Pro, Autopano Giga , etc.

Normally I use a quicker workflow as well, just found it useful in the beginning to do it that way. I will revise to optimize the video, take out some ghosts and stitching errors. In first case I wanted to set up a workflow for newbies to help them around some tricky corners.

I use PTGui Pro.

Heinz

[panocanarias]

Re: Nadir Adapter

Well, after having a look at DennisS' and Heinz' quick-tuts, I'm just thinking about ...
Why not use PTGUIs "viewpoint correction" to optimize the extra "Ninja Patch Shot"?
Using a marker at the ground (a coin, e.g.), the tripod could be moved sideways so that the "Ninja Patch Shot" covers almost exactly the first nadir shot,
but only almost; they always will differ a bit.
This should easlily be corrected with the viewpoint correction (just for the Ninja patch shot). No?
I made a quick test with the pictures provided by Heinz. Easily done (no need for CPs by hand). Looks quite good.

Salu2, Klaus

[DennisS]

Re: Nadir Adapter

Why not use PTGUIs "viewpoint correction" to optimize the extra "Ninja Patch Shot"?

Go ahead. I now always check the "viewpoint correction" after aligning the patch to the Nadir shot. Sometimes it makes no difference. Other times it fixes stitching errors.

[hindenhaag]

Re: Nadir Adapter

Viewpoint correction will be an addition of course.

I will do a test wether re-levelling is a must or if it might work without.

Cheers

Heinz