Finding Your Camera's Nodal Point - GigaPan EPIC User Manual

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GigaPan User Guide

2.8 Finding your camera's nodal point

What is the nodal point?
The nodal point of your camera is the point about which you must rotate your camera for
perfect panoramas.
Why does it matter?
When you rotate a camera about its nodal point, you eliminate an effect called parallax,
which causes objects to appear to have shifted when viewed from different lines of sight.
To see this in action, close your left eye and hold your right thumb up close to your right
eye. Hold your left thumb up at arm's length, such that it gets blocked by your right thumb.
Now close your right eye, and open your left. You'll notice that while you could only see
your right thumb with your right eye, you can see both thumbs with your left. This is be-
cause you're now viewing your thumbs from a different line of sight.
Using this concept, you can eliminate parallax from your camera.
1. Mount your camera on the EPIC.
2. Select a scene that is similar to the above thumb experiment - one object in the fore-
ground, and another in the distant background, being obscured by the foreground
object. (A row of pillars or street lights is ideal).
Note: Ideally, the foreground object should be at least 10 feet away from your camera.
3. Set your camera to its full zoom level.
4. Position your camera so that the foreground object is at the left edge of your screen,
and the background object is obscured behind it.