Camera Support |
In the summer of 2003 I bought a new tripod ball head - KIRK BH-1. Why didn't I buy it before? Well, it is quite
an expensive piece of equipment itself, and you have to add the price of lens and body plates, which are not
cheap too. But when I bought my EOS 10D the things have changed, as my 400 mm lens turned into 640 effective.
Previously I used Manfroto 168 heavy duty ball head, which is a good starter head, but it has some
limitations, of course. Otherwise people wouldn't pay 10 times more for *pro* ball heads. From my experience,
I would say that it is a good head, if you use it with lenses up to 400 mm of focal length and if you tightly lock it. For anything
above and especially if you want to track something, it simply doesn't produce sharp results. At
least it didn't work for me.
Why these *pro* heads are so different? First of all, they have a large head; second, you can precisely
control tension; and third, most of them use precision manufactured Arca-style quick release plates,
so your lens doesn't move within the quick release mechanism. Another advantage of these heads is that there is no
ball creep - when you lock it, it doesn't move. I like also that Arca-style plates are much
smaller compared to the hexagonal Manfrotto plates, so I can keep them permanently on the body/lens and it
doesn't bother me at all.
The Kirk BH-1 tripod ball head and The Cool Stuff neoprene bottle suck as a ball cap.
Even though camera support equipment is not so delicate as lenses or camera bodies, I try to protect at
least the head, as it is sensitive to dust, sand, but also to branches of the trees when I walk in the woods.
There is one commercial tripod head protector available - The Vested Interest Ball Cap, but I was not willing to
pay 20 USD plus shipping to Canada for it. Instead I went to a local outdoor equipment store and for
much less I bought The Cool Stuff Insulating Neoprene Suck designed to fit Nalgene 1L wide mouth
water bottles and found that it fits the Kirk BH-1 head perfectly. Furthermore, the neoprene is
a waterproof material and has good shock-absorbing properties.
KIRK universal plate mounted on my Canon EOS 10D and Really Right Stuff 86B plate mounted on my EF 400/5.6L lens.
I use KIRK universal body/lens plate which comes with the KIRK BH-1 head as a plate for my EOS 10D and
an older version Really Right Stuff 86B lens plate for my EF 400/5.6L lens, which I bought second hand.
Now, whether I shoot macro with my EF 100/2.8 or birds with my EF 400/5.6L lens I am sure that my setup
is perfectly steady. But the head is not everything, you need also sturdy (and usually heavy and expensive) tripod,
and my Manfrotto 055NAT, which I bought in 1999 still serves well for this purpose.
As for the maintenance, I do clean the head and tripod regularly with a dry cotton cloth. Kirk also
recommends to use WD-40 for the head ball once a year. From time to time (usually in winter)
I completely dissasemble my tripod and clean it off the dirt. This is necessary to do,
especially if you use it often in dirty water.
Disassembled Manfrotto 055NAT tripod and a closer look on the dirt on the legs and leg fasteners.
I use small white stickers on each part of the legs so that I don't mix parts from one leg with the others!
When I photograph shorebirds, or when I want to get low, I often use my GroundShot2 CSP made by KIRK for
the NaturePhotographers.Net network. You can also built it easily by yourself as I did before I
purchased the original GroundShot. It is basically just a piece of metal with a hole in the centre to fasten the head, but it
does help a lot. Can you imagine crowling in mud with a tripod with spread legs?
Montreal; November 23, 2003
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