Paul - www.spin2see.com

[Matt]

We purchased the 360precision rig a few weeks back (beginning of 2006). from the UK and used it for the first time this week on a big shoot involving 20+ panos. We're very happy with the head, the customer service and the results we achieved. The engineering quality is outstanding. We use it with a Canon 20d and Sigma 8mm. We shoot 6 horizontal + 1 up. The down shot is not worth bothering with as you get very limited additional information. The upshot is very easy to achieve with this rig which was a pleasant surprise.
The head is extremely stable and has a really solid feel to it. It's a little heavier than expected but it packs away nicely and is very portable. Setting up a "perfect" template in PTMac took some time to figure out. Both Matt and Stu went to extraordinary lengths to help us create one. They were very responsive to our (stupid) questions, jumped through a lot of hoops to get us the rig in time and gave alot of advice on calibration
(you'll always need to calibrate it yourself). Stu tells me he is actually writing a "how to" guide on this tricky subject that will be a great help. They know their stuff.

The head appears expensive especially if you live in the US. We paid close to $1000 including overnight shipping. When you look at what it saves you in time though especially on a big job, I think it's pretty cheap and can pay for itself in one good sized production. All we do now is load our images (shot always in the same order) into PTMac, apply the template and stitch. No more futzing around with control points and optimizing. We output with enblend PSD format as some finetuning may still be necessary in photoshop before color correction, sharpening. It's not absolutely perfect but it's pretty darned close. With the new improved control arm they're planning to produce, it will get even better. All we need now is for PTBatch to work with enblend so we can batch process all the panos at the same time instead of having to process them individually.

If you do this stuff for a living and need to optimize your workflow for speed, it's the only way to go in my opinion. You can now spend more time being creative and less worrying about getting a "perfect" stitch each time. Net, net. It works. It's consistent. The level of service is exceptional. I sincerely hope this product will be a great success. These guys really deserve it.

Paul
http://www.spin2see.com