I've been wanting to improve my panoramic photography so I got an L bracket for my camera, a leveling plate for my tripod and a nodal slide as well.  I'm hoping that these three pieces of gear will help me take better pano's! 

Ya I really didn't know what I was getting into when I decided I wanted to take better panos lol.    Here's a bit of description of each piece for those who may be interested...

1.  L bracket - attaches to the base of your camera so that you can easily switch your camera from landscape to portrait mode for pano's (more stable than simply tilting the head of your tripod and keeps the lens centered over the rotating point).

2.  Leveling base - I had no idea how important this was for panos.  My tripod ballhead has a leveling bubble on it so I just assumed that if I leveled that my photo's would all be level as I panned.  Needless to say this is not true.  You need to level the tripod UNDER your tripod head and then again ABOVE.  This ensures that as you pan your camera all images will be level and much easier to stitch successfully.

3.  Nodal Slide - This is another thing I had no idea about.  You are correct Barry in that it allows you to slide the camera forward and backwards to the correct point so that the lens rotates directly around the correct point.  This eliminates the parallax effect and is also key in getting good panos.

I am still waiting for my slide to show up but am anxious to try it all out!