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The Nodal Ninja 5 panoramic head by Fanotech is designed to enable photographers to take images through a 360 degree horizontal and 180 degree vertical field of view.  Coming in at a lower price point as compared to similar Manfrotto 303SPH or the Kaidan QPP panoramic heads the Nodal Ninja lines main objective is to provide a panoramic head of strong quality at a good value for those looking to get into panoramic photography.

For this review I will look at the Nodal Ninja 5 (NN5) with RD16 rotator package that is available from the nodal ninja website www.nodalninja.com.  The Nodal Ninja 5 is a larger and heftier in design than the Nodal Ninja 3 (NN3).  The NN5 is better suited for full sized heavier DSLRs and their lenses than its NN3 counterpart and in my opinion better suited for advanced amateurs and professional photographers.

The walled city of Obidos Portugal is a time capsule from another age.  The first fortification was built here sometime after 713 by the Moors, and the town has a long history of royal intervention and restoration.   The beautifully maintained walled city is a world heritage site and a fantastic location to spend a day with you camera.  From small lanes, to colorfully painted houses, to courtyards filled with citrus trees you’ll never run short of things to photograph.

You will however need to contend with the tourists.  Planning your day appropriately for a visit to Obidos can lead to the best photo opportunities with good photographs rather than a set of standard tourists snap shots.  Buses arrive early but depart early as well.  With a limited number of hotels in the city itself the tour groups often leave for the evening.  This of course doesn’t mean the town will be empty at other times; you’ll just have less people to contend with.

I recently had a chance to read through Harald Woeste’s book Mastering Digital Panoramic Photography ($34.95).  I found the book to be a good primer on panoramic photography techniques.  It covers the photographic equipment you’ll need, a section on software, and an interesting set of real world example projects at the end of the book.

If you are new to the world of panoramic photographer the first chapters are a nice introduction to the tools and techniques you will need to understand to capture images that can be later stitched into panoramas.  Most useful was a section outlining some of the VR panoramic tripod heads that are currently available on the market.  I found the brief summary of each model with pros and cons valuable and had wished I had read the book before I had purchased a VR panoramic head myself.