P3D Tip #437, How to Shoot Panorama's with a Bogen Slide Bar

[Gabriel Jacob <jacob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>This was a fantastic way to close our summer vacation.  I am now
>looking forward to 1) the rolls to come back from processing,
>2) Cleveland stereo club meeting (tomorrow!), 3) Detroit stereo
>club meeting (Wednesday), and a long season of stereo viewing,
>projecting, mounting, competing in club and PSA level, photo-3d
>chat, and more!
>
>George Themelis
 
Wow, wow, wow! ;-) I don't know how you do it! Yeah, I know you
only sleep 4 hours but I think I would have to forgo sleep
altogether and I still wouldn't be able to accomplish everything
you do! 

Regarding closing of summer vacaTion, what closing!?! Here in
Montreal, it's still a balmy 27C (~82F). I don't remember a
summer (especially for late August and September) being this hot,
ever!

Okay, enough chit-chat and back to 3-D business. The reason
I'm here is to post tip number 437 (whatever happened to the
other 437 tips? I'm working on them.) Today I was taking some
3-D pics with the Bogen slide bar that Dr.T (and others) sell.
As most know, it's pretty compact and has a good sideways
travel , not hyper mind you, but a bit more than 2.5 inches
(almost 3.5 inches). When I finished shooting some images and
waited for the digital camera to transfer them to the
computer, it hit me!

I've been thinking for awhile on how to do panoramic images 
without having to buy an expensive panoramic tripod head or
making one. Well, the idea (which I'm sure has been thought
of before, but I never came across) was using the Bogen bar
with a standard tripod to accomplish the same thing.

All one has to do is turn the camera 90 degrees, so that the
camera is now perpendicular to the bar. Then move the camera
on the bar back and forth, till you find the optical center
of the camera lens (no observed parallax between foreground
and background). Once this is determined, secure (screw on
bar), so that the camera doesn't move back and forth. To get
a panorama, rotate the camera using the tripod swivel and 
shoot the images with a slight overlap.


Gabriel