I am ready to purchase my first DSLR camera. I take a variety of shots, but a considerable number are on construction sites, following the work progression.

I don't have a ton of money to spend, but have seen the Canon EOS Rebel T6 with 18-55 & 75-300 lens, wide angle & telephoto lens, flash, ND & UV filter sets, 48B memory (16 & 32), tripod & battery charger for $ 449.95 on Amazon.


My questions is this: is this a good basic camera to start with, or is there another in the same range that is better? Is there something with the equivalent lens, etc. that is considerably better for closer to $1000.00?


Please advise a newby.

Crop sensor, full frame makes zero difference for Panoramas. I use currently shoot with a Nikon D850, but took excellant panos with a D7100 which is crop sensor. What is important is technique, equipment and stability.

Shooting Panos is best in portrait format, which gives you the best aspect ratio for stitching later. WHen you swing your ball head over to position the camera vertically, the axis of rotation is off center, which will introduce stitching errors in the final result. An "L" bracket allows you to position the camera vertically right over the center of rotation, and is a lot easier to level. See link for typical "L" bracket:

https://www.amazon.com/Legged-Thing-QR11-LG-Universal-L-Bracket/dp/B073RS751Q/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1543471813&sr=8-3&keywords=3+legged+thing+l+bracket

The second most important tip is take time to level your tripod head. I have a specialized leveling base independant of my ball head for precise leveling. Get yourself one of those spirit levels that mount on the hot shoe and fiddle with your ball head until it is level in 2 axis. Remove any Polarizer filters from your lens, something else that will ruin a pano. Shoot at 100 - 125 mm; overuse of wide angle focal lengths will result in distant objects being too small to have an impact. You are going to stitch the images together later, so use a longer focal length.

Don't be afraid to position your tripod low, so the lens is 2 ft off the ground. You will get an interesting foreground this way.

Using Live View really helps with framing. So, after going through the leveling process frame your first shot. Before starting, I hold my hand in front of the lens, fingers pointing to the right, and take a single image, which lets me mark the starting point of the series. Looking at the image in Live view, divide the image into thirds. Take the first shot and rotate the camera so the portion of the image what was in the final third is not in the first. This gives you enough overlap to stitch correctly without errors.

Have fun.

An Oscar winning Cinematographer tole me to always shoot panos left to right, and the technique works. After your last image, do the hand thing again with the fingers pointing to the left. Back in front of your computer, this makes it easy to determine the start and end of a series.