Phillip Stiger
January 30th, 2007, 05:04 PM
Do you prefer a pan tilt head or a ball head?
Bart_van_der_Wolf
January 31st, 2007, 05:27 AM
Do you prefer a pan tilt head or a ball head?
It depends on the type of photography.
A pan/tilt head allows to modify the field of view in only one dimension at a time, which may speed-up things if it suits your type of imaging (e.g. if you want to avoid introducing roll after meticulous leveling).
A (good quality) ball head allows fast adjustment of two dimensions + roll, at the same time. The ball head needs good friction control to avoid accidents or jerky movement.
I'd say that for very accurate positioning, a pan/tilt head (even a modestly priced one) has the edge. For most other uses, a heavy ball head seems the best, but expect to pay a significant price for a really good one.
Bart
Cem_Usakligil
January 31st, 2007, 07:47 AM
Having worked with solely pan/tilt heads in the past, I have recently bought a very good ball head, the Manfrotto 468MGRC2. It offers hydrostatic and mechanical friction control and is very practical in use. I would not want to miss it now, very happy with it. For the rest, Bart has said all there is to say really.
Just my humble EUR 0.02 ;-)
Cheers,