My apologies to those of you who have seen pictures shot from the roof before, but this one is different.

What makes this first pano interesting is that I broke all the rules when I made it. I used a very modest camera, and shot in fully-automatic mode. I set the Gigapan rig on a ledge on the roof. The rig was not perfectly level, and had a tendency to wobble. Basically, I setup and shot the pano as quickly as possible to see what kind of results I’d get without trying too hard. Given that the rig used to produce this level of detail costs less than a single mid-range lens for my Nikon D3, I think you’ll agree that the results are pretty darn amazing.

Over the next few days, I hope to shoot more with the Gigapan head and a Canon G7. I’ll compare the results to those from my D3.