Can anyone recommend a good book on this subject? I'm looking for something that goes into detail the working of pano heads.

Have you checked the tutorials on the Really Right Stuff website - they have a substantial amount of good guidance on this topic.

Bill, excuse me for the question, but how much experience do you have with creating panoramas without pano heads? Did you run into parallax error already?

So far I've only tried this with the camera hand held with good results when the scene is somewhat far away, but when I try to take multiple shots of a large building, yes, I'm running into parallax error. Also, I think its going take two rows to do this right.
I understand what causes parallax error and what it takes to correct it, and I've been looking into pano heads, but the good ones that can do multiple rows are quite expensive. I'm a machinist by trade and program and operate CNC machine tools, and I'm thinking about making my own pano head.
So I thought I'd read up on the subject first to get a good understanding before trying to make my own pano head, or possibly buying one.

Fascinating - if you can make a good prototype which you could then replicate for not too much money you may have a business venture on your hands!

Looking at detailed pictures of panoheads at 360precision.com, www.nodalninja.com and reallyrightstuff.com you should get a good idea about the constructions. Another webpage is http://wiki.panotools.org/Panohead, have a look at the links under Self made on the bottom of the page.

I am a hobby machinist, I made my pano bracket. That is good only for portrait mode, which is enough for me, and this way it is very light. Our fellow poster "elf" made one too, which he enhanced more and more during the years, it is now more complex than any commercial one I have ever seen, though I don't know the weight. That one is certainly suitable for the highest precision work, like interiour architectural pano.

See http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....34396&st=60

The panohead I have used for the last several years was made in less than an hour with about $10 of stuff from Lowes and a Gitzo G1270 head which I already had. Think Oak and carriage bolts. It is absolutely stable in 30mph wind.

All a panohead has to do is position the center of the lens roughly on the rotational centers, there are a lots of cheap and easy ways to do it. I have noticed that the fancy panoheads tend to value light weight over stability, IMHO a big mistake that compromises you when there is the slightest amount of wind or when you are trying to shoot fast or with a long lens or with a heavy camera. A genuinely stable panohead is worth some extra weight, especially when failure is not an option as with professional work.

Regarding panohead construction, as a design observation the quest for cleverness too often trumps the need for functionality. A successful design is most likely to follow when one works backwards from functionality towards cleverness. Unfortunately the usual design path is to try to impose some clever idea on functionality, regardless of whether or not it's the best solution.

My first pano head was a panosaurus. http://gregwired.com/pano/Pano.htm . It offers a very basic look that is completely functional. Also for lots of ideas about homemade heads and pano stuff, I would suggest Max Lyons forums. http://tawbaware.com/forum2/

Harald Woeste is writing a book called Mastering Digital Panoramic Photography, which in my opinion should be a very good read. It should be released soon and you can preorder it at Amazon now. Another good book on panoramic photography is Panoramic Photography: From Composition and Exposure to Final Exhibition by Arnaud Frich. But I don't have any experience with it. I also find bestphotographybooks.com to be a good resource on the best photography books.