Pan-Tilt Heads

MattKing · May 26, 2020

I wonder if anyone makes a combination leveler and three way head.

Kodachromeguy · May 26, 2020

jeffreyg said:
I also have a Manfrotto 3047 that i use with my 350 and sometimes with the 350 + 2x. the lens doesn't have a mounting plate so I had a machine shop make a "gadget" that has a mounting plate and holds the lens. I would use the mounting plate that is on your 3lb lens because it is designed to balance the weight over the tripod.. It should not be inconvenient since it is probably in this case best to remove the camera from the tripod to change lenses anyways.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

http://www.sculptureandphotography.com/

The 3047 head was made for many years. It was crude and heavy, but it did the job. Fred Picker sold it with his Zone VI lighter as well as heavier tripods. Manfrotto (or Bogen?) also made a flat plate to fit the hex head receiver. The plate was the right size to hold the bottom of a large format camera and distribute the weight. I much prefer the Linhof quick release, but it is a much more expensive system.

Dan Fromm · May 26, 2020

Alan Edward Klein said:
Well,, the reason I ask is I never can get a tripod perfectly level even with a the bullseye. It's always off enough so when I pan, I have to adjust the three-way anyway after I pan. So will the leveler really provide me a pan without any need for leveling after moving? If I still have to adjust even a little, I might as well not bother getting one. Do you or anyone find this problem with the leveler?

Alan, I dislike people who won't take yes for an answer. And I dislike paranoid old men who think I have nothing better to do than mislead them.

So, NO. Don't get a leveler. It will never satisfy you.

Mine have all worked very well for me as long as there was fluid in their levels.

DREW WILEY · May 26, 2020

As you already know, I don't use any head; but back when I did, it was that same big Bogen/Manfrotto chunk of metal that others have mentioned. In terms Gitzo, the G1570 would seem more realistic to me, and the older non-magnesium version of that sometimes turns up quite affordably. In terms of peripheral comments, simple little bubble levels will never get anything truly level. You can acquire a decent miniature machinist's level for less than $50, or a high quality torpedo level with a machined edge from Stabila for around that same price, capable of reading level on a platform base like the G1570 Rationalle provides. Or a pendulum style angle finder would work even better for less price. I never worried about it, but simply cropped adjacent frames a bit during enlargement or print mounting when making diptychs and so forth. The same could be done for scanned or digital stitches if one is intent on joining that particular fad.

Darryl Roberts · May 26, 2020

Arthurwg said:
In pursuit of maximum sharpness with my recently acquired 500mm F8 Hasselblad lens and soon to arrive tripod I've decided to move away from ball heads as too problematic and less stable and move on to a pan-tilt head like the Gitzo GHF3W 3-Wedge-Fluid-Neiger. I won't be photographing birds or other fast-moving wildlife but rather landscapes and architecture, so I won't need a gimbal set-up at this point either. I also understand that attaching the lens directly to the top of the tripod may be the most stable, but that seems too inconvenient. Any thoughts?

It's heavy but I love the simplicity of my Majestic head.

Arthurwg · May 27, 2020

The 229/3029s are better, also heavier.

Either would work well for the OP.[/QUOTE]

Arthurwg · May 27, 2020

The 229 weighs 4.4 lbs. That might be too much for me.

Alan Edward Klein · May 27, 2020

Dan Fromm said:
Alan, I dislike people who won't take yes for an answer. And I dislike paranoid old men who think I have nothing better to do than mislead them.

So, NO. Don't get a leveler. It will never satisfy you.

Mine have all worked very well for me as long as there was fluid in their levels.

Dan, I'm sorry if you took my question as a criticism of you. It wasn't. The point I was making was I've never been able to use a bullseye to get a perfectly level tripod. Maybe you're better at it than me. But since I can't do that, I'm wondering if it makes sense to get a level that uses the same type bullseye that the tripod does. Maybe there are others who find they have the same problem I do. If they do, maybe they have a way around it.

I noticed that there are 90 degree levelers that line up along the edge of another device and have a little torpedo level on each side. Maybe something like that would work better for me than a bullseye. In any case, thanks for your comments.

Dan Fromm · May 27, 2020

Alan, if we didn't have this damned coronavirus I'd offer to drive up and let you try my tripods with ball levelers. Before the plague arrived I went up to north Jersey occasionally.

David A. Goldfarb · May 27, 2020

I’ve used setups with levels on the tripod, on the leveling head, and on the tripod head or the camera, and they rarely seem to agree, no matter what kind of level is used.

I like bullseye levels with ballheads and cylindrical levels with pan-tilt heads, but I’ll work with what I’ve got in any case.

Alan Edward Klein · May 27, 2020

Dan Fromm said:
Alan, if we didn't have this damned coronavirus I'd offer to drive up and let you try my tripods with ball levelers. Before the plague arrived I went up to north Jersey occasionally.

That's a really nice offer. Maybe when this virus is over, we can get together on a photo shoot sometime. I've been wanting to get down to the Pine Barrens. I was finally able to get out a few days ago. They opened the Monmouth Battlefield on the east side at least off Rte 9, and I was able to get in a few shots on my new 4x5.

DREW WILEY · May 27, 2020

My dad was once a surveyor for big Fed dam projects, and I sold survey equipment, and even once had in my hands a $50,000 laser used to align the new locks of the Panama Canal, which was even corrected for the curvature of the earth. We sold more German Stabila levels than anywhere else in the US, as well as even more precise machinists level from Starrett. And believe me, no little toy bubble level will do the job. Three equidistant machinists bubbles on a true machined flat platform can - but show me a stock photo tripod that hypothetically has that first! (One could add their own)

grat · May 27, 2020

Out of curiosity, has anyone tried the bowl style tripods that seem to be popping up lately?

Conceptually, it should work great for leveling the tripod head, but I don't know if concept and reality are on speaking terms.

btaylor · May 28, 2020

grat said:
Out of curiosity, has anyone tried the bowl style tripods that seem to be popping up lately?

Conceptually, it should work great for leveling the tripod head, but I don't know if concept and reality are on speaking terms.

My Berlebach Reporter has a leveling ball, works pretty well but moves slightly when I tighten it. But on the subject of bowl style head mounting it’s been the standard for filmmaking tripod fluid heads for about 50 years. Set the tripod, then adjust the ball base to level in an instant. This is critical in filmmaking if the camera pans or tilts. 150, 100 and 50mm are the standard bowl sizes.

DREW WILEY · May 28, 2020

Nikon once had an oddball bowl-head tripod with matching scooped-out level base in their surveying products division, which probably none of you have seen because it was an entirely separate division of Nikon, separately distributed. I sure didn't like it. All that kind of thing became obsolete once self-leveling instruments became routine. You still need to get the tripod head approximately level, within about 8 degrees or so, but then the rest is automatic.

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