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07/10/2006 01:14:20 PM · #1 |
Ok, that was fun...
I have a habit of dropping into the single local 2nd hand store and wasting my time drooling over the lenses longer than my arm that cost more than my entire camera kit... times two... Today was seriously droolworthy... the owner is selling his mint condition 1Ds Mk II for just a little over 5000 bucks US, as well as several L lenses... Yum. He's a big time bird photographer who isn't really happy unless he sticks his eye into a viewfinder and finds it impossible to reach the front of the lens just by reaching forwards...
And of course, as you can read in this thread, I've got a bit of an eye out when it comes to tripod heads...
Anyhow, so I see this new set of tripod head sitting there in this store... They all use 3/8" size bolts which obviously have to be removable to accommodate 1/4 inch users...
So I ask about it and the owner gets one out and pulls out his funky little Leica minipod.. He goes and grabs a mounting plate and pulls a D200 out from under the counter and starts putting the assembly together in front of me...
Of course I did what should be obvious... I asked him if I could...
And I could...
I unscrewed the tripod head and removed the head stud. I then flipped the thing upside down (if the reason for this confuses you, check out that link), screwed it on to the very coniently sized 3/8" stud on the Leica minipod and started screwing the stud into the 'wrong' side of the head...
The owner of the store has a look on his face like I just started drinking milk through my nose...
I then grab the mounting plate and screw it on to the bottom of the head as his eyebrows keep furling their way up his forehead...
He asks why...
I show him.... after he gets a spirit level from the back of course...
He starts to get excited. VERY excited... Like a 6 year old kid, bouncing around excited... Apparently, he wasn't the only one.... :)
He starts to explain to me that this is the first time he ever conceived of this idea (it's not actually a new one... It's a similar concept to the needlessly heavy, stupidly designed and overpriced 'magic ball' tripods for sale on B&H), and it's one that is quite interesting to him because he's currently working on starting manufacture of his own line of affordable 90 degree L mounts compatible with Arca-Swiss to provide an alternative to the rather expensive L mounts currently available. That's when I notice that his mounting plate has no name...
It's all prototype stuff... So we talked for a couple of hours and played with tripod heads in the store whilst all the various gentry that are his friends walk through the shop...
We all had to stop and take a deep breath after his friend comes in and lends him his Nikon 600mm f/5.6 with full camouflage gear and dual lens hoods (something like a foot across at the bottom)... Durn thing was standing almost 3 feet tall on the counter with everything... Breathtaking... he put it beside his _big_ lens awaiting this weekend's birding adventures...
Anyhow, the long and short of it was that he's developing his products and I got to make several modifications to his prototype line... I will be first on the list for testing it out (too bad he won't lend me his 1Ds Mk II and 24-70L for it... have to make do with me 30D)...
I'm pretty excited because the Arca-Swiss is a pretty serious mount and it might be able to help a lot of people with affordable alternatives that will allow them to get into making those really large composites that are what make Pano shooting fun...
From the pricing that he showed me, it looks like these will be 1/2-1/3 that of current available products...
We are also looking at making a slider with a vernier for extreme accuracy... Probably a fair bit more than is necessary, but it will be better than the lousy 1mm markings on my slider... I'm pretty sure that there are some guys out there who might appreciate high precision tools... I know that the owner of Tamron Taiwan is... :)
Anyhow, I was just too excited to keep that in...
:) |
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07/10/2006 02:01:13 PM · #2 |
Dang, you're a serious gearhead, aren't you?
R.
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07/10/2006 02:36:49 PM · #3 |
I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, but a) it sounds really cool, and b) it apparently is something really good, and c) it seems to make you quite giddy, so it's all good!
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07/10/2006 03:32:01 PM · #4 |
hmmmm, I think it needs a flux capacitor to get proper gigawattage. That sounds great, you get to help design more with them?
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07/10/2006 03:56:39 PM · #5 |
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07/10/2006 04:05:14 PM · #6 |
Originally posted by Melethia:
I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, but a) it sounds really cool, and b) it apparently is something really good, and c) it seems to make you quite giddy, so it's all good! |
you summed up my thoughts perfectly! |
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07/10/2006 04:12:25 PM · #7 |
Keiran,
Cool. I missed the earlier thread and I'm glad to have found it now. I already have a Giottos ball head so I'm on my way.
I also have a Jasper pano head but I'm not satisfied. I want to be able to rotate around the nodal point in both the horizontal and vertical axis. This is necessary for stitching together multiple rows of images. You have given me some new ideas for how to do this.
BTW, I don't think you can determine the correct point of rotation just by measuring. This may be possible with prime lenses of conventional design, but you can't count on it with zoom lenses, especially those with internal focusing.
Here is a recent pano I did:
--DanW |
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07/10/2006 11:49:35 PM · #8 |
:)
Originally posted by Jeff Daniels? :):
hmmmm, I think it needs a flux capacitor to get proper gigawattage. That sounds great, you get to help design more with them? |
Hrm, I seem to get that response a lot from people when I start talking for some reason....... :)
Bear: heh I guess I am a gearhead... see my profile... too bad I can't take good pictures though, hey? :)
Wheeledd: It always pays to do forum searches for the really technical stuff.. :)
That Jasper goodie looks cool, but it seems like it's not designed really thoughtfully.
Be careful with the Giottos, please note the caveats on my original thread... I don't have a lot of faith in them right now and they haven't gotten back to me... I will be moving out of Taipei in the next couple of months, but I hope to visit their headquarters before I leave and sort things out...
If you are getting serious and are going to be using a heavy setup, remember that your torque weight will be dramatically increased as you move the camera back. I would recommend tripling the actual weight of your camera and lens when trying to determine which ball-head is appropriate for you.
I suspect that the larger Giottos heads might be better.
It takes a little bit of attention to set up the friction knob correctly (if you don't, you will always be wrestling with it), but it still might be worth it to get a bigger head.
The brand that I saw was called FLM which featured a female 3/8" socket on almost all of their heads so they could be EASILY adapted for this type of use.
The only drawback is that their baseline model (32F) got loose and wobbled on the panning axis because it was not designed for fluid rotation. I found this to be disappointing because the cheaper Giottos has much better tolerances and has no wobble in the equivalent level ballhead (which is a third the price).
If I recall correctly, the bigger Giottos also features a socket instead of a stud.
Which model did you get?
Incidentally, you are correct about the point of rotation with zoom lenses... It does seem to get quite complicated... Primes might be a nice choice. I would imagine that the 100mm f/2.8 is going to be pretty good for that as would the 85mm f/1.8.
I was also told that different lenses behave differently as you zoom and focus as to where the nodal point is... I suspect that this may have to do with the location of the focusing element. Some have a rear focusing element, some have a front focusing element. I would guess that this would impact the nodal point a fair bit...
However, the ability to measure is important because a lot of this type of shooting involves using hyperfocus, so if you could set your lens to a certain focal length, then move it to hyperfocus, you could get a pretty good idea of where the nodal point would be, and once you figured that out in your home, you could then take some measurements and use these to get set up much more quickly in the field.
A tenth of a milimeter should be even more precise than necessary, but is probably where most measurements would sit.
One site that I read used this level of accuracy when describing nodal points in some P&S cams. |
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