There are many, many ways to create both plain cylindrical as well as full spherical panoramas. Here you’ll find the details of my personal setup. There is so much gear and software out there, you simply wouldn’t believe it. The setup is certainly not the most professional or precise, but it works quite well for me.

Hardware

• Nikon D70
• Nikkor AF DX 10.5mm f/2.8G ED fisheye: great lens for VR photography. I got it second hand for 600 €. It only takes 8 shots to cover a full sphere: 6 shots, once every 60° holding the camera verticallly, one of the sky (zenith) and one of the ground you are standing on (nadir).
• Nodal Ninja 3: This panoramic head is both cheap (compaired to some of its competitors) and accurate. It is lightweight (600grams) and is very portable. I ordered it on September 18, 2006 on the website and paid less than 200 € including shipping and some spare parts; got it about one month later here in Belgium.
• Manfrotto 055Pro B tripod with a 222 Joystick head. I also use these in combination with my Leica APO Televid birdwatching telescope.

My wishlist

• a decent sound recorder with a good pair of biaural microphones. Adding sound to a spherical panorama is a great plus. I was thinking about an Edirol R-09 or a MicroTrack 24/96. Unfortunately, both are very expensive (considering for what I will be using it for).
• a Nikon D80

Software

My main platform for working with panoramas and photography in general is Mac OS X. I love Macs. And since they do Windows too, I don’t think I’ll ever consider buying a PC in the next decade or so. That said, I still need Windows, but only for one reason: PTGui plugins.

PTGui (€ 65)

I use PTGui for creating full spherical panoramas (360×180°) taken with my fisheye lens.
PTGui is cross platform software originally written as a GUI for the much acclaimed Panorama Tools by Helmut Dersch. Recently the developer added his own technology for bending and blending images, which should replace Panorama Tools eventually. But he’s not quite there yet. You really should use PTGui in combination with these third party plugins, which, unfortunately are only available for Windows:

• Autopano: creates control points automatically
• Panorama Tools (hacked version): you need this to do full spherical panorama’s
• Smartblend: the most powerful blending technology available. Enblend is dead.

Autopano Pro (€ 99)

Whenever I create panoramas with normal (non-fisheye) lenses, I use Autopano Pro (€ 99). Autopano Pro is arguably is the best stitching software the world has ever seen. It doesn’t do fisheye lenses yet, but the day it will (end of 2006), I suppose I’ll switch entirely to this incredible all-in-one package and abandon PTGui completely. You can use it on Mac and PC, since the developers even managed to port Smartblend cross platform.

Interesting detail: Autopano (the free plugin for PTGui, see above) was written by the authors of Autopano Pro. They use a much more powerful version of Autopano in their own software.

Other software

• Adobe Photoshop
• CubicConverter (49 USD): I use this to create Quicktime movies from the final stitched panoramas. It does a great job at that. Nothing else here.
• DeFish (Free): Occasionally I need to ‘defish’ a photo taken with my fisheye lens. This little freeware tool is just what I need.
• Flaming Pear Flexify 2 (35 USD): Photoshop plugin for creating alternative projections of your panoramas (e.g. Little Planets).