360 Panorama Motor Settings - Stage R Pan/Tilt Heads  

Thought I would post what I finally determined was the proper motor ratio setting for my (older/original) Stage R pan and tilt heads. I had been using the "Default" motor settings for my timelapse tests, and that seemed to work fine for timelapses. But, as Patrick explained to me in an email, those default settings would probably not work for 360s. He suggested trying out the Setup Wizard, and then if that didn't work, to just trying to manually guess a workable value for the motor gear ratio. 

I tried to use the Setup Wizard to calculate the motor ratio, but that gave me a value of 1:6.26 (See screen shot). But that was not a good value as the pan and tilt head movements were not nearly large enough (I think maybe because there are multiple gear ratios on the Stage R).

Then I spent a while just guessing at increasing higher ratios, and running 360 tests so I could visually compare the initial straight up shot with the final straight down shot... until I got a value that is very close to perfect. That value it turns out is 1:63.18 (See screen shot).

Actually... because there's a calculated amount of overlap in your images, it doesn't have to be perfect. But, for anyone else using the Stage R pan and tilt heads for 360s, manually setting the value to 1:63.18 should work well for you.

Happy shooting!