To improve panorama stitching without a pano head, the main goal is to minimize parallax: rotate the camera around the lens’s no-parallax point (often called the entrance pupil) as closely as you can. Even without dedicated pano gear, simple aids like a hotshoe bubble level or a plumb line can help you keep rotation more consistent.

Lens choice matters too. A wide lens is common for panoramas, but extremely wide lenses can introduce more distortion. A practical approach is to use the widest focal length you have that doesn’t produce excessive distortion, or correct lens distortion before stitching. Some photographers prefer a more normal focal length for cleaner geometry, at the cost of needing more frames.

Also, some distortion in the final panorama is normal and may be unavoidable, especially with very wide fields of view. The panorama projection used in stitching software often has a bigger impact on the final look than the lens alone.

So: keep the camera level, rotate as consistently as possible around the no-parallax point, avoid ultra-wide distortion if it causes problems, and choose the projection in post carefully.