I’ve been asked a few times on the blog how I find the Nodal Ninja panoramic head so I thought i’d do a little write up on it for all the people interested in buying a panoramic tripod head.

Before I purchased the Nodal Ninja, I bought a Panosaurus, which did the job it was designed to do, but I found it a bit of a hassle to set up each time I wanted to shoot panoramas. I accidentally left it in my car on a hot day and it warped which was the end of that.

Over the Christmas holidays I met up with a fellow flickr photographer, Beau, at Kings park and he was using a Nodal Ninja. He asked if I would like to try it out for a few shots and of course I said yes. It took only a matter of seconds for him to take his camera off of the NN3 and for me to put mine onto it. It was also quick to level with the use of the bullseye level and ezLeveler (the ezLeveler is an optional extra). After shooting a few frames I knew I wanted one. And once I got home and loaded the images onto my PC and watched them stitch seamlessly I wanted one even more. A few weeks later I purchased the Nodal Ninja 3 mkII pack from their website. They were out of stock at the time so I was refunded my money and told that they would have more in stock within 1-2 weeks and I would be notified and receive free express delivery. They delivered on that promise.

The Nodal Ninja 3 is small, lightweight and easy to set up. It came with detailed instructions. Most Canon and Nikon camera and lens combinations have been pre-measured and are listed on the website, which makes the initial set up simple. The default detent ring allows for 15/18 degree rotations. The NN3 package also contains 20/24, 45/60, 72/0 and 90/120 degree detent rings which suit different lenses.

I haven’t had any major stitching/parallax problems while using this product, besides the usual moving water, and would highly recommend it to anybody looking for a budget panoramic tripod head. The main thing you need to do to achieve good results is to make sure the head is level. See some examples of what the Nodal Ninja can do in some of my previous blog posts.

For more info check the Nodal Ninja website.