I’ve been making stitched panoramic images with Hugin on and off for a couple years now and have always wanted to make one of those fancy panoramic tripod mounts. For some reason or another I just kept putting it off. Last week on a road trip I took some panoramic photos for the 1st time in over a year, this of course sparked my interest again which led to me finally build my tripod mount. It ended up being really easy and cheap (under $10 although I seem to have lost the receipt already) Here is what you will need from your local hardware store to build your own.

Parts list

• 8″ mending plate
• 6″ corner iron
• a few 1/4″-20 wingnuts
• a few 1/4″-20 bolts

Tools I used

• Drill
• hacksaw
• vice
• grinder
• 1/4″-20 tap
• Digital micrometer

Construction was fairly straight forward. I will be mounting my Canon 20d portrait style and using my 50mm prime lense.  The corner iron (make sure it bent to 90 degrees) mounts to my tripod boot so that the center of the lense is directly above the center point that my tripod rotates around. Then mending plate is then mounted however high up you want it with the camera mounted to it. The important part here is that the mending plate needs to pivot at the entrance pupil of your lense. I found the info for my 50mm here.

Below is a panoramic image made with the completed mount. This image is made up of 19 photos.