Spherical Panorama Bracket
for Nikon Fisheye FC-E9 & FC-E8
Laser cut from Natural Wood

NEW - June 22nd 2005 FC-E9 bracket Version 5 now available
Now made from model ariplane birch plywood very dense and extremely strong and durable and with a NEW screw and vingnut design for assembling the pieces.

NEW - Now Available FC-E8 bracket only 110g / 0.25 pounds

Before creating the travel bracket I did several prototypes in wood, these worked very well, and just lately I have gotten my hands on a industrial laser, this makes it practically possible to manufacture a wood bracket both relatively quickly and to very tight tolerances. So I did set out to create the CAD file for it, the base design is based on some of those puzzles which is a bunch of interlocking wood pieces, I figured that it had to be possible to make a design which did the same thing, cutting a bunch of flat wood pieces on the laser and then puzzle them together to a final 3 dimensional object. It worked.

Raw Oak Pieces straight out of the laser, note the burn marks from the laser

The wood travel bracket is lightweight and works well with Nikon FC-E9 & FC-E8 lenses, however I do not recommend using it with SLR's attached to the lens.

The version you are looking at is the third generation and I have carefully been breaking the earlier versions apart to see what would break when force is applies, the mount holding the lens is actually 4 layers of furniture grade oak, together they form a 1 inch piece of oak, creating a VERY strong piece of wood.

You can order the wood bracket today. I have stripped the masking tape and brushed some of the burn marks off the wood and assembled it all together in working form. The assembled kit cost $75 plus S&H. If you like you can take a piece of sand paper to either one of the kits and clean off the black charred marks from the laser.

This bracket can be used for spherical panorama photography, for travel, hotel, real-estate virtual tours, with either 2 or 3 spheres, notice how the camera on top of this page is rotated to vertical, this is because I recommend photographing with 3 spheres trimmed for better quality spherical panoramas... click here for a clip from a previous discussion about vertical vs full sphere.

The design were mostly driven by being a end user. I wanted ease of use, light, and portable.

• The bracket were designed to hold the lens instead of the camera this eliminates several problems
  1. Camera lean, when a heavy camera is captured from the side, since the bracket is like a clothes pin locked on the lens, there is no leaning or vibration.
  
  2. Since the camera size and shape is not part of the equation the camera can be updated without having to purchase a new bracket.
  
  3. Light Weight. As a backpacker this is very important for me, for comparison, the Kaidan CS bracket weights 1.93 pounds, the travel bracket only 0.35 pounds. This is about 155 grams Backpackers and globe trotters - your bracket have arrived.
  
  
• By reducing the footprint I also reduced the amount of time spend fixing the straight down of the panorama.
  
  
• Instead of a large rotator I am using a Bogen extension which rotates smoothly and have no practical footprint in the picture, I removed the head from the tripod and mount the Bogen extension directly to the center screw of the tripod, the result is a very small footprint, which I find mostly can easily be retouched with the cloning tool in Photoshop.
  Manfrotto product # 259B - Bogen code (USA only): 3007X
  Cost is app $20 at places like Samy's in LA and B&H Photo.
  .
  
  
• Instructions for setting up and photographing with the bracket.
  
  
• Click here for some of my panoramas most of these are photographed with the travel bracket, some with the wood bracket, or with earlier test versions.
  

Availability
The Wood Bracket is available today.$ 75 +S&H
Important - Specify Nikon FC-E8 & FC-E9 lens
Send me an email for order instructions.

Email:

Back to Bo's Panorama Page

Bracket pieces being cut on the laser, because of the accuracy of the laser it is possible to create a fvery accurate spherical panorama bracket from high grade model aircraft birch plywood, which is a uncommon dense and solid wood.

What Cameras Work with this bracket..?

The easy answer is "pretty much any camera you can find a way to mount behind a CF-E9 fisheye lens.

The Panorama bracket were designed to use the Nikon FC-E9 fisheye converter lens. This lens naturally work well with most Nikon Digital cameras, however it is worth noticing that it works equally well with most other brands, the main requirement is being able to screw the lens to the front of the digital camera, most new digital cameras have a way of mounting a "extension tube" for filters and add-on lenses, it is easy to get a adaptor filter ring at your local photo store for fitting the Nikon FC-E9 to almost any camera, you need either a step-up or a step-down ring. So far I have successfully used this lens with the travel bracket on these cameras.

Canon G5
Canon A60
Canon A75
Canon A80
Pro1 does not work.!

Minolta Z-3

Nikon 5400 - Recomended
Nikon 5700
Nikon 8400
Almost all CoolPix Cams

Olympus 5050

Location in the LA River

Other Panorama Brackets

Italian Agnos is very similar to my design, and beautifully manuractured. Includes bubble level and click stop.

Kaidan are big boys in panorama brackets and VR rigs. These brackets are all somewhat larger than my design.

Jasper Engineering is one of my favorites for simple and straight forward panorama bracket.