This is a review of gear that can take much of the stress out of professional level photography requiring flat stable platforms with rotation and ability to hold 5-10 kilo or more lb in weight of pro gear.
SUNWAYFOTO photographic equipment company was founded in Shenzhen China in 2008. It aims to produce high-end photographic equipment. It has set itself a goal of the highest standards and has added it's name to the other manufacturers of gear that are standardized to the Arca Swiss style dovetailing clamp and plate system that is so popular with enthusiasts and professionals alike. I had never come across their products until I found myself losing so much time making wonderful Panoramas, one of the worse addictions to have in Photography! Until recently I thought I had no real need for precision even in ambitious panoramas I was proud to make. Really what was happening was that I was working far to hard because I had scrimped on equipment and short-changed myself in upfront technique and discipline. I had such good results that I thought I was dong well!
The Black Hole of Panorama Stitching and Corrections! With software like AutoPano Pro, AutoPano Giga, Photoshop, PTGUI and many more being able to stitch even quick handheld panos, there's a huge temptation to just do everything freehand. It seems so easy!
If one software package has problems, try another. Yes there might be errors, but is adept at photoshop, anything can be repaired. Add up the time, it might be 20 hours of labor for 1 ambitious panorama. At first, there's a great satisfaction that one can do miracles like this. However, it's a huge mistake. One's time gets sucked into a black hole of pano repairing!
A New Era in Photography: Rapid Pano SketchingSometimes, a large pano is not as appealing when completed as one might have imagined. We cannot normally see the wide vistas that our panoramas build from overlapping shots. So there's an advantage for rapidly "sketching" potentially fabulous panos. For this I looked to see what others here had successfully accomplished.
I followed the practices of Bart Van Der Wolfe, Nicolas Claris and others here and decided to build a careful considered and systematic approach to panorama building. Taking a clue from Nicolas' work, I purchased an 8mm Sigma circular fisheye lens with an Eos mount. With the Really right Stuff Gimbal, I made 6 flat ectilinear panos in a about 1 hour. Each required just 3 overlapping shots, which consumed less than a minute to snap!
To my astonishment, stitching such weird circular frames, is a 30 second to 1 minute job for
Autopano Giga! rendering was only about 3 minutes more. Yes I spent a minute or too checking out choices other than a circular projection and yes, sometimes a mercator projection looked better. Remarkably, the stitches are perfect! No more errors to correct, no cloning, nothing to do but alter the contrast or saturation perhaps and sharpen! The most time consuming is being awestruck!
So now my method is to sketch my panos with the 8mm Sigma Fisheye. If I like the result, I then will make an high resolution set of images with a 24, 50 or even 200 mm lens. Now with many more images from left to right, there's need for indexing and having several rows.
For my work with many architectural panoramas both exterior and interior, fixing errors in stitching was becoming time consuming. What took up the time handling large numbers of files, stitching and rendering the panoramas, often over hours and then far too long correcting and retouching mistakes in the stitched pano. So to go the extra step of stitching accurately and the least number of frames, I am looking at choices of equipment.
Sunwayfoto is a design and engineering company that works with aircraft grade aluminum and CNC machines to build a large line of tripod head attachments and camera brackets and plates and the like for photography. I decided to look for gear that would work with my 5DII and the Really right Stuff Gimbal for 360 degree Panoramas and also be suitable for working with 8x10 large format. Why not aim to go first class?
I have just received for review from the following:
- A giant leveling base, The sunway DYH-120-TRO that could hold any camera from a 1Ds Mark III to an 8x10 LF camera or even 20"x24", I'd guess!
Basket
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Sunwayfoto DYH-120-TRO Leveling platform and DDP 64 Rotating Click-stop Indexer. 
