Originally Posted by gamgee 
Could you please explain workflow a bit more - how did you do it?
I made many panoramas until now, handheld and on tripod, and for many different purposes: from extending the viewing angle to raising up the final image resolution, from creating deformations to extending DOF.
That's my workflow.
First of all I shot RAW cause when you'll go stitching the photos you must have the same WB.
To ensure blending I also use a fixed setting for aperture/shutter speed... to do that you must evaluate the exposition of all the area you want to cover with your panorama: after that choose the exposition which fits well.
Now the hardest step (which could be made also as first): look at the subject of your panorama.
But what to look?
First of all you must find where your fixed stitching points are... if you don't locate them in your subject it will be hard to find them while stitching behind the monitor (and if you locate them you should also be lucky to have included them in the shots...). Once you find the points, include them in the shots you'll take.
Second: how many stuff is continuously moving? All the moving things will require a quite large amount of post-production editing (=you blend and stitch manually) and
cannot be used as stitching points... moving things:
- water; you'll have to manually blend the waves.
- trees and vegetation; if there's wind they will move
...and
don't trust your eyes when you'll find the "same shape" made by the same branches (depending on their size, branches will often joke you);
- clouds; they act in three ways: the first one is that they move depending on the weather conditions and the altitude where you are (on high mountains clouds usually move faster); the second one is that they could cross over the sun so you'll have lighting changes which could not blend in any way; the third one is a consequence of the second, cause they cross over the sun they also drop shadows and maybe over your subject (think about shooting a valley standing in the top of a mountain... how nice are that shadows, isn't it? You'll damn them!
);
- animals, peoples; they usually move but sometimes you can fix them directly while shooting: try to get the full person/animal in a way that could fit in one of your panorama slices and let it go his way (so he won't enter again into another slice)... in post-processing keep them and the final panorama will be even better (I like to include people in panoramas); crowed places need a large amount of slices and a big manual post-processing work;
- cars, mechanical; same for animals/peoples, try to keep them in one slice... if you can't you usually won't be able to blend them.
I think it's clear why this is the hard step, isn't it?
Let's go ahead in my workflow.
Unlike Panoguy, I rotate the camera around the sensor axis not around the lens.
Like other said, you must overlap about the 20/30% of the shot (take care that this mean you must overlap even the shot, if any, you'll take above and below!)... the more you overlap the better the results.
Again unlike Panoguy, I don't care of the lens focal length: for example, if I want a tele-lens effect on my subject (maybe cause I like the kind of deformation/plains-stacking) I could use a even longer focal length to get the whole angle of view I could get with a shorter lens. Nothing against using wide lenses, I just only think that panoramas isn't a synonym of "widest angle of view" only.
Don't despair if you change the focal length by a mistake (could happen with zooms): you could restart shooting even with a
slightly different focal length... Hugin/Panotools (I use these software to make my panoramas) can handle that without problems.
Final step: shot, think and shot, think, shot... and don't be to hurry when shooting panoramas (but even not to slowly: Earth rotates and this affect shadows
eheheheh).
You said you don't have much time... I understand that but practice will teach more than describing every single aspect I take care when I make a panorama. For example I don't take panoramas that I just know - cause of experience - they require too much work in post-production ending up in a not-so-good final image.
Parallax issues: sometimes a wrong stitching point would mess up the whole panorama. Avoid points located on crossings of object which are at different distances (example: a quite near cable crossing a distant lamppost). Check for correct location of points on repetitive patterns (is that window corner the same picked in the other image?).
While shooting: if you can, try to keep nearer objects in a single panorama slice.
That's all for now, maybe I miss something... fell free to ask!
Bye
Jenner