DSLRUsers.com

Gidday,

I was wondering if anyone on the forum uses any sort of panoramic tripod heads. If so what brands and what are their thoughts? I'm looking at purchasing one in the near future.

I would like to be able to do more than 1 level, eg tilt up and down.

Cheers.

I use the RRS system. This is modular & you buy what you need for your purposes. It is not cheap though.
So far I only have the basic set up (Pano ELements + Dovetail), and find it really useful for macro work as well.
To do your double plane stuff, you would probably want the "ultimate" system.
See http://reallyrightstuff.com/pano/04.html

... Obsolete ...

I have an RRS MPR-CL plate, which allows me to move the camera back/forwards so the "nodal" point is over the centre of horizontal rotation. A levelling base under my ballhead allows the head's panning function to be level. Using the camera's L-plate I can mount the camera vertically and thus pan across for horizontal panoramas.

By using the Wimberley Sidekick (that I usually use for flight shooting with a telephoto) and the MPR I can also do single-row vertical panoramas. It can be possible to do this without the Sidekick, but it does make it easier to keep the rotation vertical.

If I wanted to do multi-row panos enough I would probably invest in RRS's "ultimate" combination of PCL clamps, but just adding the MPR-CL to my existing setup has given me a lot of flexibility. Because it builds on the Arca-Swiss plates that are customised for each camera, it's very solid and there's no problem with over-tightening clamps, having mount screws slipping, etc (which I gather has been a problem with at least one "pano head" design).

Thanks for the answers guys.

I was looking at spending between $300 - $500 on the set-up. This is only for my hobby and not for a profession, so I don't think I need the 360 equipment. So far I have been using an Aldi tripod that doesn't even pivot in the centre axis. So any head I buy is going to be a 98% improvement.

I have been looking around and so far the Nodal Ninja MKII http://www.nodalninja.com/ looks to be my favourite.

Cheers