Sandy Creek – Llano, Texas
Copyright 2010 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture priority (Av) using an EF 24-104mm f/4L IS USM lens tripod-mounted. The exposure was taken at 95mm, f/9 for 1/500th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer. All post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 Beta 2. Click on the image above for a larger version.
One thing I forgot to mention in my last post is that most high quality tripods are sold “bare”, without anything to attach them to your camera. This is where the ball head and clamp come in. Good quality ball heads are designed to support heavy loads, move smoothly and lock solidly. Ball heads are easier to use and much more stable than the old fashioned "pan & tilt" tripod heads. Aiming and leveling can be accomplished as one motion, and solid lockup is accomplished with a tightening of only one control.
The best designed ball heads also offer variable tension that makes them easy to control. Tripods with ball heads are much easier to pack and carry than pan & tilt heads since they have no long handles to get in the way.
But the ball head is only half the story. The other half is the clamp system which is used to attach your camera to the ball head. Mounting your camera using the standard ” 20 screw is far too slow and insecure. Instead, many manufacturers adopted the “Arca-Swiss” standard which uses an open-ended dovetail channel with compressing side jaws that grip the mounting plate or bracket attached to the camera. This unique setup provides a quick and easy clamping system that is very solid and secure.
When used in conjunction with an L-Plate designed for your specific camera the quick-release clamp system allows the landscape photographer to quickly switch between shooting horizontally and vertically as shown in the images below.
Really Right Stuff
In my opinion the best design and highest quality ball heads, clamps and camera plates are made by Really Right Stuff, a great little company in California owned and operated by Joe Johnson. The folks at RRS are incredible to work with and their attention to detail in the design and manufacturing of camera support systems is second to none. That’s why you’ll see nine out of ten professionals using RRS gear including guys like Joe McNally, Moose Peterson, Scott Kelby and Kirk Tuck.
The advice I give to most serious amateurs is to buy the best tripod and ball head you can possibly afford and buy them only once. Really Right Stuff gear is expensive but worth every penny. The workmanship is something I’ve only seen in medical devices before and the various parts fit together perfectly, time after time.
I’ve put an RRS L-Plate on every camera I currently shoot with from my 5D mark II to my G10 and can lock them into my BH-30 LR / Gitzo Traveller in just seconds to capture that perfect light at the end of the day. I honestly can’t imagine using any other brand than Really Right Stuff.
Filed under: Photography Tagged: Ball Heads, Canon, Canon 5D Mark II, Landscape Photography, Photography, Really Right Stuff, Texas Hill Country, Texas Landscape Safari
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