Panoramic images can suffer from parallax errors if the camera is not rotated through the central `nodal' point of the lens. The problem can be solved by a panoramic tripod head.
Home-made Pano-head -- do-it-yourself instructions from Max Lyons!
Gearing up for Panoramic Photography -- Brian P. Lawler describes how to make your own panoramic mount (which Brian calls a QuickTime VR mount).
If you want to find out the nodal points yourself, have a look at Ben Kreunen's `Big Ben's Panorama Tutorials'.
RickAustin99 (dpreview, Panasonic forum, 26 April 2004) has done the hard work already and reported his nodal point findings.
In summary, the nodal point is through the centre of the lens and varies with the focal length i.e. the zoom setting. The nodal point is 39 mm above the base of the camera, and 22 mm to the right of the tripod mounting hole on the base (when viewed from behind the camera). At 1x, the nodal point is 80 mm in front of the mounting hole, at 2x the nodal point is 32 mm in front of the mounting hole and at 3x the nodal point is 4mm behind the mounting hole. `2x' is where the FZ10 indicator just turns from 1x to 2x. Likewise `3x' is where the indicator just turns from 2x to 2x. Rick speculates that good panoramic shots can probably be taken with a normal tripod if the zoom setting is at 3x.
(Klaas Bloem has kindly replicated the accompanying diagram on his own web-site. Have a look at Klaas's panorama of Ameland taken with an FZ10 below!)
