Philopod
To prevent parallax problems, panographers often use a tripod or monopod in conjunction with panoramic heads to place the no-parallax point of the camera at the centre of rotation. A cheaper and more portable alternative is to shoot handheld and use a philopod to keep the camera in position.
Philopods are named after Philippe Hurbain who describes the Philopod technique on his website.
A philopod is basically a piece of string tied around the no-parallax point on the lens, a weight at the other end of the string allows the camera to be positioned over a feature on the ground.
This may not be quite as accurate as a properly calibrated panoramic head, but there are other advantages:
- Speed of set-up.
- Portability.
- No tripod that needs to be painted out of the nadir.
- Ability to use small variations in pitch angles to capture the entire scene without separate zenith and nadir shots.
This last philopod pitch variation technique is a separate tutorial.