Nikon coolpix 5400 with FC-E9 fisheye lens mounted to the wood travle bracket for spherical panorama photography, This is a light weight panorama bracket for virtual tours and real-estate photography. because of the manufacturing method it is both strong, lightweight and in-expensive, a great starter bracker for spherical photography.

Spherical Panorama Bracket for
Nikon FC-E9 & FC-E8 Fisheye

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 easy assembly..

NEW - Now Available FC-E8 bracket Version 5
only 110g / 0.25 pounds

The new bracket design, is really a significant step forward in every way, its rock solid, locks your lens in the nodal point, easy to assemble and take appart, super light weight.

Raw wood pieces for spherical panorama brackets, cut on a industrial laser for accuracy, creating a reliable and inexpensive option for photographing spherical panoramas for virtual tours and realestate along with travlel photography.
Raw Oak Pieces straight out of the laser, note the burn marks from the laser, the blue material is a protective tape to prevent your bracket from getting smoked.

Bophoto travle bracket made from wood for Nikon FC-E9 & FC-E8 lenses for spherical panorama photography, such as for realestate, travle and hotel virtual tours.The wood travel bracket is lightweight and works well with Nikon FC-E9 & FC-E8 lenses.

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.

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
    Samy's Catalog
    Cost is app $20 at places like Samy's in LA and B&H Photo.
    .

  • Click here for some of my panoramas most of these are photographed with the FC-E9 bracket, or with earlier test versions.

Availability - FC-E9 & FC-E8 is in stock

Important - Specify Nikon FC-E8 & FC-E9 lens
Click to order

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Using a industrial laser to cut wood parts for spherical panorama brackets, each bracket is made from furniture grade oak wood, this bracket is a great choice for real estate agents and virtual tours.

Bracket pieces being cut on the laser, because of the accuracy of the laser it is possible to create a very 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

 

* Note, I now also have brackets for these popular lenses.
- SIGMA 8mm
- NIKON 10.5mm
- RAYNOX 180pro
- RAYNOX 185pro