that is a flat bracket, at the end of which is a rotator with a female screw that, according to its color, orange or light blue, can measure 1/2" or 3/8".

Let's now install on this bracket that will work horizontally (and that I'll call form now on: "horizontal bracket"), the other bracket, through its base.

The second bracket, that is the other part of the QuickPan® (that from now on I'll call "vertical bracket"), is made of two flat and parallel pieces.

The longer piece is fixed to the base on one side and to a second rotator on the other side, so that the shorter part can rotate, in order to let the camera shoot both upwards and downwards.

I proceed now to the adjustment of the QuickPan®. I have chosen to use a Canon 1Ds Mark II, with Canon 15 mm f/2.8 fish-eye (of course each coupling of camera plus lens is going to need its own, accurate adjustment).

First of all, we must "level out" the head, using the spherical level that is fixed to the horizontal bracket.

As you know, in order to avoid parallax errors and stitching problems, it's indispensable to locate the front nodal plane of the lens, so that it falls on the vertical rotation axis that passes through the center of the rotator fixed to the tripod.
If the lens is equipped with a technical documentation including the data on the conjugate distances and of the nodal planes, we must to set the camera according to those values. On the contrary, we must gauge by fixing the camera on the short shaft of the vertical bracket (as illustrated above), so that the final part of the lens in on the rotational axis.
For the moment, the position is not as important as it will be in the end.
We must adjust three settings.
The first one is virtually "automatic", if the camera, as most of them are, is equipped with a threaded hole, located on the bottom, in correspondence with the optical axis. On the contrary, we'll have to use the special disc included in the package, that allows to readjust the camera "as if" the hole were anyway central and aligned with the optical axis.

In order to get the second setting, let's aim the camera downwards; to do that, let's move the lever that keeps the two parts of the vertical bracket locked into an orthogonal position, turning until they are parallel.

It will now be sufficient to slide the vertical shaft, until,

if we look into the eyepiece as if it were a viewfinder, the center of the lens coincides with the center of the rotator.

At this point, we can screw, by the special allen spanner, the lock that will allow us to rapidly and very accurately reposition the vertical bracket in its correct position.

So far, the first two settings, have been rather simple and quick to get, much quicker than explaining how to do that.
For the third one, let's first of all bring back the camera in the vertical position (portrait).

Let's now take two stands that we'll position respectively at about 40 centimeters (16") and 6/7 meters (20'/23').

Instead of the father stand, we can use any vertical point of reference: the corner of a wall, the upright of a door or something like that.
If we now look into the lens, let's rotate the panoramic head on the horizontal plane, until the nearer stand is on the edge of the frame, for instance on the left, we can see that there's some distance between the stands.

Let's now rotate the panoramic head to the other side, until the nearer stand in again on the edge of the frame but on the opposite side. With the exception of peculiar and/or lucky circumstances, we'll notice that the distance between the stands is different from the one that we had seen before.

That means that the camera is too ahead or too behind and therefore the nodal plane is not in the correct position.
Let's slide the camera, for instance forward, and let's repeat the preceding procedure: the distance between the stands is either greater or smaller.
If it's greater, we'll move the camera back, beyond its initial position; if it's smaller, we'll keep moving it forward by little shifts, until the distance between the stance is the same when we rotate the panoramic head on either side.

At this point, we can lock the four place holders around the bottom of the camera, so that it can rapidly be relocated in the same position, when that's necessary.

I personally prefer to leave the camera mounted on the vertical bracket and put it in a special bag together with the horizontal bracket, so that I can save time.

When I reach the location chosen for the shooting, I position the tripod (a solid tripod, taking into consideration the weight both of the head and of the camera plus lens), I screw the horizontal bracket and then I slide the base of the vertical bracket until it reaches the lock; I then lock it into position with the special lever.
I then move the short shaft of the vertical bracket in the horizontal position (portrait)

and I can start to test the framing and the exposure. According to the kind of shot, I decide which bracketing I should use.
I now proceed with the shooting, taking six pictures with the camera in the vertical position, one upwards for the zenith and one downwards for the first nadir shot. I turn the head by 180 degrees and a I take a second nadir shot.
Thus, after the stitch, I will have in the lower part of the picture the center of the head, so that, in order to make the retouching of the nadir easier, I can proceed in two ways:

I either move the tripod sideways of about 80 centimeters (32") or one meter (40") at most and shoot again or, thanks to the way QuickPan® is made (and this is its party piece) I use another procedure that I will illustrate in detail later on.

Let's now take care of the stitching.

Once I've chose the shots with the exposure that I consider the fittest, I import them into Bridge (but it could also be Lightroom or Aperture or any other software that allows to open Raw files)

and from there I open Camera Raw.

Once I've chosen the settings, I save the images into a folder that I call "Contributions".
I open PTGui,

I click on Load Images

and from the window that gets open I chose the images to be loaded;

the picture get loaded;

I click on Align Images

and now the operation of automatic generation of the control points starts.

At the end of the fast operation (depending of course on the features of your computer), the Panorama Editor window opens.
So far, using Kaidan PanPro, I have never had to make adjustments in Panorama Editor. If we look closely, though, we can see a few little flaws (second wheel on the left).

Let's now have a look to the location of the control points.

After the visual verification, let's carry out a numeric one, checking the table of the distances between the various control points.

I eliminate the farthest points and I optimize again, starting from "b" and adding one by one the other parameters, excluding of course g and t, finally reaching a maximum value that is, in this case, less than 1.

If we look at Panorama Editor, we can see that even the small flaws the we could see before are no longer there.

We can now create the equirectangular. Let's set the parameters.
Final dimension of the file: "maximum dimension";
File type: "PSD layered" (with layer masks);
Levels. "Blended and Layers" (file on layers and on one layer with shading);
Stitch motor: "PTGui";
Blend motor: "Enblend".
We can now create the panorama by clicking of the button "Create Panorama".

Let's now open in Photoshop the obtained file,

in order to eliminate the head part of the nadir (just a little bit)

that we can take away by using the white brush on the two concerned layers.

Let's unify the layers and let's save the equirectangular file in Tif format.

Let's open it in Cubic Converter, let's convert it in Movie

and let's extract the lower face to end with the retouching the elimination of the head.

We use here the nadir shot taken by moving the tripod, after appropriately converting it from fish-eye fullframe to rectilinear.

After the retouching, we get the "clean" equirectangular that we open with Cubic Converter to finally edit the final QTVR.

Instead of PTGui, we can use Realviz.

The images get loaded by the special button;

they get united with the special button;

they get automatically aligned.

We then "equalize" the images

and we proceed to the rendering

by setting the few necessary parameters.

From now on the process becomes the same as the one that we saw before, that is: once we have got the equirectangular, we convert it in Cubic Converter, we retouch the lower face of the cube, we get the "clean" equirectangular.
At this point, here's a different procedure, that is allowed in this format by the features of the panoramic head, that consist in the retouching of the nadir shot before the stitch.
The procedure starts at the end of all the other "normal" shots, with the realization of a further nadir shot in a special way, that is in fact allowed by the special constriction of the head.
After unblocking the vertical shaft of the head, we take it off and insert it again, after rotating it by 180 degrees, until the base lock is aligned with the bracket, so that the camera is on the outside and out of the rotation center.

Having measured that the overhang is 35.5 centimeters (14"), I reproduce that measure on the ground with the help of three bits of paper tape, so that I can move the tripod with the maximum possible precision allowed by this sort of maneuver: the most important thing is to try and avoid or anyway reduce as much as possible the rotations.

At this point, I open with Photoshop the three nadir shots (the base nadir shot, the 180 degrees shot and the "shifted" shot) and, with the help of the layer masks I get one shot without the tripod head, that I use as eight shot: this reduces by one the passages in Cubic Converter.

ENJOY.
(Roberto can be reached at his email studiofoto at iol.it)

Roberto Mancuso is a professional photographer who discovered VR in 1997. Since he's using for his professional assignments the Quick Pan Pro, he wrote the above tutorial to share his expertise.

Links:
Kaidan
robedimank.com