When doing manual stitching or even in-camera panos, I always end up with some ‘jaggies’ on the edges and each end might be the victim of barrel distortion.
I Always crop to right angle corners ……
I was taking a course at the local JC taught by a hi-end commercial photographer. He showed the class a huge pano / composite he made. I think he stitched rows, than stitched them together to make a full huge print of his subject.

My good tripod has a ball head, not fluid / pan-tilt and I gave my dolly away years ago……

hi leon. thanks for your suggestions. not sure what you mean by cropping when using pano head.

Sony glass is $$$ and only so-so. My 18-200 is useless above about 100mm and the F6.3 max open aperture at that focal length is a Bad Joke. Even outdoors in bright sun, I find myself @ISO 1600 to get it stopped down to 8 or 11.

A 360 pano head? Depending on how much crop you are willing to do….and I do panos with my 35mm f1.8 held in portrait position, I can get some wonderful shots. Of course with the technique I list, you must be willing to do some software stitching.

If you *REALLY* want to specialize in pano shooting and for example 1, weight, 2, autofocus slowness 3, lack of native / 3rd-party lenses isn’t a problem, I’d recommend the first Pentax K-1 with, say, the 35mm. The pixel shift technology is extremely good. I’ve shot tons of panos with the K1 mostly with its pixel shift mode and I loved them.

And if you don’t want to spend much, you can also get a Sigma Merrill compact. I have two of them: the DP2M and the DP1M. For pano shooting, I’d go with the DP2M or the DP3M. Because of their non-color filtered sensors, you can have the same quality of output as with a pixel shifted camera (the above-recommended K1 or, stepping in a lot more expensive category, the Sony A7R3.)

Note: the DP2M (let alone the DP3M), having a 45mm (75mm) equiv focal length, make it necessary to shoot a LOT of photos at one location for one single pano. If that’s an issue (for me, it isn’t as I generally shoot architectures), avoid these cameras. The DP1M is wider but has a bit weaker lens. I don’t really recommend the newer Quattros.

Let me know if you need more info. I can for example link to my DP2M panos.

Good point! Hopefully they add it in the future — the hardware is already there after all!