Today i'm going to show you these six different types of tripod heads that are available
i'm going to show you what they're good for and what might be best for you and your photography
good tripods normally come in two sections you've got the legs and you've got the head
the legs will obviously give you the height that you need but once at that height the tripod head
is very important to get the camera leveled off and exactly where you want it so i've got these
six different tripod heads and i'm going to show you what each of them are good for what to look
out for when buying one and what to avoid when choosing a tripod head the first thing to do
is work out what you'll be shooting the most then work out your budget and then get the best one you
can afford i've used cheap kit an expensive kit and the expensive kit just makes the job quicker
and easier to complete and it kind of just makes it more pleasurable to do there's nothing worse
than having to fight with your tripod head or your tripod trying to get the camera into the
right position as the light you want to photograph is slowly disappearing so the six that i'm going
to go through today are a video tripod head a ball head a geared head a nodal pan head a kind of flex
a zed type of head and then a gimbal head a ball head is a great all-rounder it consists of a ball
in a cradle so that's this bit in here and then you have a few adjustment knobs and then a quick
release plate on the top that quick release plate can be the rc2 from manfrotto or the arca swiss
i use an l bracket so i prefer the arca swiss type so i can very quickly change my camera
from landscape to portrait also they're relatively small and lightweight so fantastic for traveling
or using on long hikes when you just want to take some static images and long exposures the
main thing with a ball head is it's very quick and easy to get your camera in around about the right
position so it has speed but not precision so if i was to put my camera on here and i was setting up
and i had something that i want to photograph i could get it in the right position and then
tighten it off the problem with this is if you're just a little bit out and you want to adjust it
you have to loosen it off and it'll move and it might not move in the way that you want it to now
there are a lot of ball heads on the market and you can get some really cheap ones and you can get
some really expensive ones the cheaper ones tend to be a little bit problematic when you tighten
them up it might move a little bit or you tighten this up so you tighten the friction knob up and
you let it go and then it settles this one from k f is pretty solid i really like this one this is
the one i use quite a lot i used to have one from manfrotto that had one knob for everything so that
was one knob for panning for tilting for moving the camera around and everything like that whereas
this one from k f it's got this one so i can set the camera in and i tighten up that friction knob
and then it's got this one so once that camera's solid i can turn the camera and that ball head
is still locked off one other thing with these as well is if you don't use an l bracket what you can
do is loosen them up and a lot of them have this groove in the side so you can drop your camera
into that portrait position with a ball head so if you want absolute precision this is not so good
it's easy to get in around about the right place but it's not easy to get in the perfect place also
the cheaper you go the more likely it is to drift with a bit of weight or move as you tighten it so
if you are going to go for a ball head choose wisely and spend as much as you can afford
the next head is a video tripod head and this is obviously for videography they tend to be bigger
and heavier than some of the photography tripod heads but they tend to have a few features that
really do suit shooting film and video and by this i mean dampening this will give it
a much more smooth pan or tilt when filming if you've ever tried doing a pan or tilt with just
a ball head unless they've got some kind of weird design in it that kind of dampens it out
it's an absolute nightmare and especially at the end of a long lens this is where a video tripod
head really comes into its own now i don't have it on at the moment but video heads do have an arm on
it as well to help that panning and tilting motion i'll actually grab it now and put it on this one
so they normally come with arms like this this is normally adjustable so you can put it to
exactly the position you want it and then if you've got your pan and your tilt loose
you can do one or both so you can really move it around and do some really small smooth movements
with your camera and with this tripod head and that all comes down to that dampening now another
thing that video tripod heads tend to do is split up the panning and the tilting so if i loosen this
i can just pan if i tighten that off and loosen this i can just tilt or i can do
both so it really does allow you to do smooth and dampened movements they also normally come
with a big manfrotto plate or something similar to the manfrotto plate and by the manfrotto plate
i'm talking about these long thin ones and you'll normally see these on electronic gimbals as well
so this enables you to move your camera forwards or backwards and balance it on the tripod head
because if you loosen off the tilt and it's balanced too far forward the camera drifts down
forward and if you set it too far back it drifts backwards so that's why it has these big long
forward and backward adjustable plates on them now you can use these for photography but it's hard to
put your camera in the portrait position and in fact if you just have it on this manfrotto plate
you can't really put it in that portrait position unless you have an arca swiss adapter plate
and an l bracket if you do travel and shoot film you can get some smaller dampened heads
like the manfrotto b3 but these do get wobbly with any decent amount of weight on them and when using
a long lens as well they start to really show the wobble in your footage so if you do shoot
a lot of things with a telephoto lens get a good decent sized one with a heavy set of tripod legs
so the one i have here is the mvh-500ah from manfrotto but this stays at home most of the time
because it is quite heavy although it is really good and i've used it to film kite surfers
with a 100 to 400 millimeter lens and it works well in that scenario now if you are going to use
this for both video and stills it's worth putting an arca swiss adapter plate on like i just have
so this means you can take it off from landscape position to a portrait position
really quickly and really easily this adapter basically changes this from just a video head
into a hybrid head so you can shoot both photo and video with it now you can probably tell
that i'm a fan of these l brackets i do have them on all of my cameras and they really do
come in handy they make things so much easier if you don't know what an l bracket is i've
done a video on them already so click on the link in the corner or in the description
the company edelkrone first came out with this concept and it really is a funky tripod head these
can be moved into position quickly and nowadays a lot of other chinese companies have adopted this
design now i'm a little bit tight so i bought a chinese copy and i kind of regret it what i've
found is these points here are either too tight or too loose and you never kind of get it right
so if you put a heavier lens on or if you're really sort of hanging the camera over the edge
whoops it drifts down like that so you can see straight away that the cheaper ones
don't really hold your camera in all of the positions that this tripod head lets you hold
it now i always carry an allen key because the one i've got does have these allen key bolts in there
so i can tighten it up when i want it in certain positions now i don't really use this on my tripod
i use it more on my slider because it's nice and compact and when i have the slider on the ground
i can get that camera really low and much lower than if i had a video tripod head or a ball head
so if you are interested in this type of head make sure you get the edelkrone one
as the copies tend to be pretty rubbish if you can't afford an edelkrone one and you still want
to get one of these make sure you get one with the adjustable panning section on it
and by that i mean this bolt under here so you can actually pan it side to side the first one i got
didn't have this i tightened it onto my slider and it was at an awkward angle and i couldn't
pan that to the position that i wanted to so it really is important to get one with this
panning motion in the base if you're a sports or wildlife photographer you might have seen
or you might already own one of these heads these allow you to move the camera around effortlessly
and if you have a really long lens on there you can move your camera into different positions
and if you've balanced it properly it will stay in that position when you're using let's say the
100 to 400 or the 200 to 600 millimeter lens or one of the really long prime telephoto lenses
these are fantastic i only rent those bigger lenses as i don't really use them that often
at the moment but if you're getting into wildlife or sports photography this is where this kind of
gimbal tripod head really helps now i bought one of the cheaper ones to show you this type of head
and it's pretty bad so make sure you do spend at least 100 on one of these if not more the more
money you spend the more features they'll have and the smoother the action will be what you basically
want is a nice smooth panning motion and also a nice smooth tilting motion also the center point
of the camera should be over the center point of the tripod so the person who made this hasn't
really done it that well at all and that's why this one isn't really good also when i loosen the
tilt function up this is really wobbly and it's a bit all over the place with the more expensive
ones these will have ball bearings in them the motion will be nice and smooth and also some of
them will have a bit of dampening in as well so the more money you can spend on them the better
it is because you don't want to put your really big expensive lens on a really cheap tripod head
like with a motorized gimbal for filming you need to balance these for the size of camera and lens
combo that you're using so when you point it in a certain direction so if i point it up like that
i've balanced this already it will stay in that position if you don't balance it properly what
you'll find is it'll drift out of place so once it is balanced properly you may be photographing an
animal and you'll be able to tilt it in that position and the camera will stay in that position
and you won't have to hold it you won't have to struggle with those really big lenses
another thing with these gimbal heads is that once you've balanced your camera on them you can have
quite a lot of weight on that tripod head and you can move it effortlessly so when tracking birds or
maybe planes in the sky this makes it a lot easier now the one downside to these gimbal tripod heads
is the setup time if you change the lenses you'll need to re-balance it but if you only shoot with
one lens or one telephoto lens you can keep all of the settings exactly the same for a quicker setup
with a geared head this gives you the ultimate amount of precision these heads have adjustment
knobs for each of the three axis and you can either move them a lot so let's say i pull
this out i can move it quite a lot and then as i lock it into place i can then turn this
for that really fine adjustment this means that you can get your camera exactly where you want
it now it is a bit fiddly to get the camera in around about the right place but once it's there
you then start adjusting with these three knobs and get the camera in exactly the right place
so if you're a stickler for precision this would be the tripod head for you i'd say these would be
good for macro photography if you're really tight on your subject on maybe a telephoto macro lens
and just need to move the camera ever so slightly and also i found them really good with landscape
photography they are a little bit heavy and it does mean that you're adding more weight to
your bag if you're going for a hike but once you get your camera in that position you can really
fine tune it and you can really look at your frame and see what you want in that frame and
you can kind of exclude things or you can change the horizon and then get it spot on now the one
downside to these geared tripod heads is that they're not that small and they're quite heavy
so for hiking and traveling they are quite cumbersome i would love to have one of these
everywhere i go but it just kind of adds a little bit too much weight to my kit
so if i'm doing landscape photography and the location's not too far from my car i will take
this tripod head i have the benro geared head and it is really good but there is one quirk with this
when you turn these obviously that's your fine adjustment but when you come to the big adjustment
you've got to grab these and it's weird you've got to turn them the opposite way so i've got
to turn it as if i'm tightening it and then that means i can do big adjustments on each of the axes
so again i turn this and the way i'm looking at it it looks like i'm tightening it so that moves
it that way and then it locks back into place and then i adjust it it's just one of the quirks
of these gear heads it just feels a bit strange you're always turning it the wrong way and you're
like why isn't that working but it's tightening it whereas if you turn it that way it loosens it
just one of the quirks of it and i just wanted to let you know about that quirk now this one also
has an arca swiss quick release plate again works really well with my l bracket so i can switch it
from the portrait to the landscape position really quickly this next gadget is a nodal pan head now
it's packed down at the moment so i'll build it up and then i'll show you what it's good for
so this is the 360 type of noodle pan head and it allows you to shoot big super wide panoramas
and to be able to stitch multiple layer panoramas together effortlessly you set
it up so the tripod's level and then build it up so it sits like this you need to get your camera
and your lens to the point where you don't get any parallaxing and by parallaxing i mean
when you pan or tilt your camera sometimes you'll find that things closer to you move differently
to the things in the background depending on where you point the camera and the idea of
this tripod head is to stop that movement from happening so when you point the camera one way
it pivots on that nodal point so you don't get any parallaxing whatsoever like i've already said this
is good for panoramas and really big landscapes also if you haven't got a wide angle lens this
will allow you to shoot much wider by making it easier for your computer to stitch multiple
layered panorama shots together now it does pack down pretty flat and doesn't weigh too much so you
could keep one of these in your bag and maybe use one of the other tripod heads but when it
comes to setup times it does take a while to build it up and get the camera into the right position
so again if you wanted speed you'd probably want to go for a ball head but if you love shooting
panoramas and it's something that you really want to get into i'd say go for one of these heads now
i have the basic model from newer and it is quite basic so if you want to get the best out there
you can't really go much wrong with the really right stuff ones they make a whole host of nodal
pan heads from the really big ones to some smaller travel ones they are quite expensive though
but you do get really good quality and they are really well engineered now i don't exclusively
shoot panoramas but every now and then i do want to get one so i keep this in my bag and when i do
see a scene that works really well for a panorama i'll break this out and i'll take that panorama
and it just means that the computer will have an easier time in stitching that image together
so the way these nodal pan heads work is that first of all you line the center of the lens up
with the center of your tripod and then you move the camera backwards and forwards until you find
that pivot point so you're not going to get any parallaxing when you move the camera then let's
say you're doing a multiple layered panorama you'd point the camera down and then you'd start at one
point take a photograph take another photograph take another photograph and so on and so forth
and then you tilt it to that horizontal point do exactly the same again you take your series
of photos and then point it up and do exactly the same thing now with this bottom bit this
enables you to point the camera and it will click into place at given spaces so you'll take a photo
it'll click into place you'll take a photo there it'll click into place you'll take a photo there
so it gives you even spaces between each photo and the same with this vertical piece it clicks into
place it clicks into place so when your computer comes to look at stitching all of those images
together they're all evenly spaced and if you use the sphere projection it works really well
so if you're a sports shooter and you do a lot of things on a really long telephoto lens
a gimbal heads really good for that if you want to shoot a few things or you're a videographer
and you use a slider a lot this zed tilt head is really good if you want precision you maybe
do macro photography or you don't mind a bit more weight and you want to get your landscapes
absolutely perfect a gear head is really good for that if you shoot big panoramas a nodal head is
really good and it enables your computer to kind of struggle less when it's stitching them together
good all rounder is the good old ball head and then if you're a videographer obviously the video
head is really good for that and also if you're a hybrid shooter if you shoot videography and
photography the video tripod head is really good but make sure you get an l bracket for
your camera and put an arca swiss adapter on that so you can shoot in the landscape or the
portrait orientation now what tripod head do you use let me know in the comments below and let me
know what you like best about it or if you're in the market to get a new one let me know in the
comments below what you're thinking of getting it'll be great to hear your thoughts now if you
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