Level tripod head and camera

Before starting to shoot your panorama make sure the tripod head and the camera are level and the camera therefore rotates round a vertical axis for left-right rotation.

If the camera is not level then left-right and up-down will start getting mixed up, the problem becoming more pronounced as the camera is further off-level.

The effect of the tripod head / camera not being level is illustrated on the right for a simple cylindrical panorama and a camera which was quite far off-level.

It is still possible to extract a rectangular panorama strip (as shown by the red shading) but verticals won't be vertical and the available image area is reduced.

In spherical panoramas the effect of off-level shooting will usually manifest itself when you try to look left-right in the panorama and in you get up-down movement as well.