getting it right: panoramic

[dantheman]

Hey guys,

I have been trying out panoramic shots lately and put simply, they suck. One thing that is really annoying me is the stiching. I have made a pano head that seems to work quite well, i have it set up to what i belive is the nodal point of my lens, and i make sure that the tripod is leveled properly so that when i rotate it, it is on the same horizontal line. now i use photoshop CS3, the stiching in it is pretty good, how ever i use auto stich and the resultant shape is horible. It is really tall on the sides and skinny in the middle, this seems to be the perspective correction. will cs3 do this for all photo stiches or does this mean that somewhere i am out and it is not capturing the image properly and im not rotating around the nodal point.

How do you stich your images, and do you get results like these?

Thanks
Dan

Edit: I was ment to put this in general help, sorry if its out of place here