Parallax is a phenomenon where two objects in your source images appear to have changed their relative positions from one to another, because of changes in the camera’s perspective. To avoid having stitching errors, we recommend that you avoid having parallax at all costs; that is also to say, ALL of your images to be stitched into a panorama must be shot from ONE single viewpoint.

The viewpoint for your camera lens is its entrance pupil, also known as no-parallax point or nodal point. Now suppose if you mount your camera on a tripod and start turning it on its base, the lens/perspective is constantly changing as you take images for your panorama. And that is NOT what we want.

To solve that problem, you need to attach a panoramic head, panohead for short, onto your tripod, to help rotate your camera around the front of the lens.

If you don’t have a panohead, you can also craft a philopod, which is a piece of string tying the no-parallax point of your camera at one end with a weight at the other end. This technique is also explained by its inventor, Philippe Hurbain on his personal website.

That way, by having your 360 camera swiveling on a fixed point, you have ensured that the perspective remains the same, and saved yourself the headache of having stitching errors.