I'm Done With My Ball Head

just because my last video was about why I haven't bought a new camera yet does not mean that I am anti Gere video I love a good gear video and that is exactly what I have for you today some genuine consumer advice has solved a massive problem for me that I've been having for at least a year now so this is my old man throttle ball head I've had this for I want to say about three years now he served me well but over the past year I've been having some problems with it a couple of problems that haven't been massively detrimental to my photography and I've always been out to work around them but it got to the point where it was so irritating and actually you know I thought I need a calm a conk I can't carry on like this I need to sort this out and that the problem with this tripod that I've been having problem umber one is with the clamp the clamp is at the top of your tripod that's what bites down once your tripod plate or an L bracket if you use one of those the clamp here is is faulty basically and what happens is it doesn't bite onto the L bracket properly all the bit on the plate and also it doesn't release properly there's a little red button here that you're supposed to press and that will release your camera from the tripod head more often than not it doesn't release it because there's a little little clamp inside and it's just it's just not working I can't don't really know how to explain it other than to tell you that every time I take my camera off the tripod I have to massively wrestle with it and then eventually stick my finger in to release the little bit that bites down on it and it was annoying it was annoying but I could live with it I could live with it but what I can't live with is this this is the rotating base the panoramic base if you want to shoot at panoramic photograph you level your tripod and then you loosen your you loosen this the panoramic rotating base and you you spin your tripod head around like so and get a lovely sweeping panoramic shot now the problem with this is you know this is a solid ball head but as soon as you loosen as soon as you loosen the panoramic head there's loads of play tons of play which means all of a sudden is properly wobbly and you know and that's been doing that for ages and I've just kind of lived with it I don't know why I'm just lazy I think I just don't know maybe I'm just reluctant to buy stuff but yeah I can take this apart tighten all of the internal gubbins and fix it but after a couple of days it just comes back so yeah it was really really annoying and as I've been shooting panoramix more and more lately you know leveling your tripod all of the time becomes an annoyance and that excuse me that is where this bad boy came in now this is my eye footage ghazal tc7 tripod not a sponsored video let's just get that clear another explained and talked about this tripod in previous videos but for those who won't have seen it essentially you have a handle underneath the tripod that you loosen with a twist and it's called a ball head so what that means is if you want to shoot a panoramic you don't have the level you tripod faff on with your legs and all that sort of stuff you can just plonk your track but down loosen this and your level oh you level the ball head like so problem.this there's so many problems the problem with this system is that there is a bubble a bubble level here but as soon as you put a tripod head on to the tripod you cover the bubble you can't see if it's level or not so it's almost a moot point you know it's just it's just yeah it's annoying you know and I don't want to do is level the tripod and then screw on a ball head every time not to me is just excessive faff so what have we learned so far we've got a dodgy tripod head no Manfrotto it's about doing I've had it for years it served me well I'm sure in more panoramix and I'm sick to death of level in my tripod on boggy rocky uneven ground it's irritating me so I want as a solution that means I can shoot a panel quickly efficiently without leveling my tripod and I want it all to go smoothly without any you know wibbly-wobbly notes that I get from this tripod head are you with me I hope you still with me right this this is the solution I got an email of a gentleman massive massive shower to Simon money or it could be meny but I think it's money Simon anyway emailed me and I can't remember why I must have been whinging about a tripod head or looking for a solution and he recommended this this head it's not a ball head it's completely hollow there in the middle and this is called an hour an aqua tech aqua tech of loved ones ecommerce it called aqua tech long lens head this head is designed for something like a 500 ml the Beast of Alanis but it does have certain qualities that lend itself to landscape photography if used in conjunction with a ball head definitely not a sponsored video and tell you how to know if a video is sponsored or not if the person using the product had to buy a second hand of ebay it's not a sponsored video and that is exactly what I did cuz I can't get one of these in the UK so what really got my attention with this tripod head is its simplicity I was originally gonna go for a tripod head with a panoramic clamp three-legged thing through one of these that's the one I was gonna buy I think it's called an airhead I'm not entirely sure and essentially what that means is there as a panoramic clamp so this clamp here that your camera attaches to has a rotating base so you can rotate it from this point rather than this point and that means your dot the level your tripod you can just level oh oh yeah another problem with this is it really stiff yeah you don't love a tripod you level your ball head and you rotate from here rather than here and I thought that was a fantastic solution for one it shoot panels easier and more but it turns out it's not because this part of the trumpet bit waffling here I'm sorry I just want to explain why that's not a good solution the reason it's not a good solution is simply because if you are looking at a mountain range or you're on top of a mountain looking down a valley or you're looking up at some trees essentially if you're shooting a panoramic and you're rotating from the clamp you're clamp has to be perfectly level which means you can't tilt up and you can't tilt down so if you're shooting a panel you can only shoot dead straight that might give you far too much sky or far too much ground or whatever the only way around that would be to have a tilt shift lens until up till down so that solution didn't work for me but this this works for me and it's so simple now the reason I like this is like simplicity weighs 400 grams this one weighs 550 560 grams so I'm already saving quite a lot of weight and the beauty of this is it only has two movements one is that it rotates from the base like every other tripod head out there like so the second movement is simply tilts forwards and backwards like so you can see here if I tilt this all the way down there is a bubble level right in the middle there which means the ridiculous placement of the bubble level on the Gazelle and isn't an issue anymore which is fantastic news so yeah I mean it's not really much more to say about this tripod head it's super lightweight and it only has two moving parts essentially oh and of course the Clampett so yeah it's just gonna make panoramics easier it's gonna make general shooting easier and because i've eliminated the ball section i don't have to worry about getting it level this way cuz i could just use the ball head i don't know if that makes sense so now this in conjunction with this is the perfect marriage now I'm not sponsored and have no affiliation with that don't even know the guy's a tie footage however if they are watching this video why you guys haven't invested in a head like this to go with your tripod is beyond me because it's a marriage made in heaven and it's definitely something you should look into it's a fantastic solution although saying that you can actually look at the bottom of this head it just says this product is protected by one or more of the following patents so yeah it's the patented it out of it so and maybe they can't do that there is a downside to this head and that is that it isn't currently going to work with my beloved enduro tripod now I do believe Endura will make a bowl head as well for this so I'm going to look into that but as soon as I put it on this tripod which is a standard tripod without a ball head I hope you following me I hope you still with me on this video then I lose you know I don't get the left-right movement which means I won't be able to get a level shot and I'll actually be back to levels in the tripod just to take a standard landscape of it so it has to be used with a bowl head has to be so there you go that's why that's my video all about my latest bit of gear oh for anyone interested this is made by a company called aqua tech and it's a long lens head you can't get them in the UK and they are expensive and unfortunately I got the only one secondhand on ebay so so yeah there you go I'm very very excited to use it it's solid stable lightweight perfect panels and it's the marriage made in heaven to my ball head tripod I'm gonna go now cuz I'm just talking rubbish this tripod head gonna keep hold of it for now because I might still want to use it with my enduro but yeah I'm gonna take it off my gear blog if you haven't visited monkey a blog it's a blog post listing all of my gear and haven't updated it for months need to do that so I'll be taking this off and I will be adding this so hey girl thanks so much for watching and tune in next time and your guess is as good as the - what that video is gonna be but I'm definitely going for now so yeah until then bad bad bad bad [Music] you

Channel: Thomas Heaton

Views: 395,470

Keywords: landscape photography tips, best ball head, tripod head for landscape photography, acratech tripod head, manfrotto ball head, landscape photography gear, best tripod for landscape photography, panoramic tripod head, best tripod head for panorama, photography tips

Id: YRFAwNx7QJY

Length: 11min 33sec (693 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 27 2019