On The Subject Of Heads

[Walter Glover]

My preferred alternative to the geared head for my current circumstances is the LEVELLING HEAD which is made with providing a level platform upon which to mount another Pan/Tilt head similarly to a half-ball cine tripod. I guess the advent of panorama stitching with the 0-1-0-1-0-1 has fuelled the increase in models on offer. Also the recent addition of panning function above the head rather than just below as used to be the case. This one is a cracker and allows tilt of 17º in all directions. Sinar cameras have a click-stop on TILT of 20º because they maintain that beyond 20º incline maintaining parallelism results in an optical illusion of divergence but damn it! 17º is close enough for me these days.

Mounting a camera directly to to the levelling base saves the additional bulk, weight and cost of an additional head. The 'oil-head' movement is sufficiently dampened to allow steady and precise alignment of levels and, once the framing is set vertically, horizontal alignment to the subject plane is fine tuned by 'fluid' panning. This one is the SUNWAYFOTO LEVELLING HEAD DYH-90RI has a 90mm diameter top plate. Like all bulls eye spirit levels, bar the ones from. Miller Professional, I would not trust it,



iPhone, room light. LOL

[Mick Fagan]

That certainly looks the goods, for your circumstances it should be brilliant. I myself have always liked ball heads, simple, quick and within reason not too hard to use. Hardness to use though, certainly goes up pretty quick in a direct relationship to your camera size.

My Berlebach tripod has what I consider for me to be the optimal head arrangement, a ball joint incorporated into the tripod head. Berlebach call it a levelling tripod head. I have a 100mm column, which I use mostly, I also have a 500mm column I can quickly swap to. This tripod head has two bulls eye levels, my camera has a single bulls eye level, as long as they are all within a bulls roar of each other, I'm happy.

https://www.berlebach.de/en/?bereich=details&id=303

Mick.