Wildlife Photography Gear: Turn Your Ball Head Into A Gimbal - Lightweight, Lower Cost, Better Way

hi in today's video i want to talk about my ball head and gimbal head set up for wildlife photography and birds in flight when i'm shooting from a tripod so i have here in front of me really right stuff's bh40 ball head that is their mid-range size ball head they make a much bigger one called the bh-55 and if you own something like a 500 f4 lens or a 600 f4 lens then you probably want that bigger ball head the bh55 but for those of us that have tamron or sigma 150 to 600 lenses or the one that i'm using lately sony's 200 to 600 lens uh those lenses aren't really all that massive and this bh40 ball head can certainly support the weight okay it is a bit of an expensive ball head but i do have an alternative for you which will save you half the cost of the really right stuff ball head and i'll put a link to both of these both the really right stuff one and this alternative that i'm talking about in the description below all right so the first product of course is your ball head the second product that i use to get my camera into a gimbal head type situation is something that hardly anybody's heard of before it's a fourth generation designs multi-function companion you can see that it's a small product it's not massive it's easy to carry with you it weighs less than two pounds and it has two functions it functions as a macro slider and i'll do a special video on that at a later time but for now let's get it set up and i'll show you how to use it for wildlife photography alright so the first thing you do is you drop your main camera attachment down into the vertical slot and you tighten up your main ball but you leave your rotation loose then you take your multi-function companion it has this stop knob here so it can't go all the way down it won't go further than that you slide it in and then you tighten it up just like you tighten the control on your camera then you grab your lens this happens to be sony's 200 to 600 and it's got a different tripod foot on it than the original that came with it i've done a video about that in my in the accessories video you can see which tripod foot i recommend but anyway you lift this knot knob up here you slide this on you close that knob and now you can see that you're balanced over your tripod you can let go of the setup and it isn't going anywhere and you've got all of your range of motion that you need to follow moving wildlife and even birds in flight with this easy lightweight setup again there are two products here that i've talked about and i highly recommend both of them first of all it's really right stuff bh40 ball head and second of all it's fourth generation designs multi-function companion very easy lightweight setup and great for wildlife and i appreciate you watching my video and hope to see you soon

Channel: Don Mammoser Photo

Views: 3,202

Rating: 4.9642859 out of 5

Keywords: sony 200-600mm lens, tamron 150-600mm lens, sigma 150-600mm lens, wildlife photography, birds in flight, camera ballheads, camera gimbal heads, better gimbal head for birds, leofoto ballhead, nikon 200-500 lens

Id: Vdpv9N2epUI

Length: 3min 31sec (211 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 23 2020