At 07:07 PM 6/8/2006, Winsor Crosby wrote:
>I know they are popular, but I just don't "get" the L bracket. They
>are big, ugly
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder?
> and seem like they would be uncomfortable to grab.
Why grab it? The "L" part of the bracket isn't in a position that
most people grab I don't believe. I know I don't. In any case the
surfaces on the RRS L brackets are nicely rounded.
> The reasons that people give for them just don't make sense to me.
No comment. ;-)
>The reason I have seen most often is that if your ballhead is not
>perfectly level and you flip it to the side it will not be exactly 90
>degrees and you will have to reframe. I can't imagine not reframing
>going from a horizontal to a vertical shot.
I agree.
>Some have said that it eliminates the unstable offset. It seems to be
>considered seriously, you need a better ballhead if it will not hold
>a camera and small lens to the side. Any lens heavy enough to cause
>instability should have its own foot.
It's not instability in the way you seem to be thinking. One of the
nice features of the better ball heads like the Acra-Swiss B1 is
that you can easily adjust them so that the ball is pre-tensioned
very precisely and, when you release the lock, the camera can be
pointed from side to side and up and down easily and will hold its
position when released, all without locking the head. But, when you
flop the ball over at a ninety degree angle you lose this balance and
then have to use one hand to position the camera and the other to
operate the tension lock, at the same time. The ball head will hold
the camera securely but you lose the nice, balanced handling that you
paid for when you bought the ball head.
Also, at least with the B1, the tension on the head increases when
you flop the ball over. (That's one of the reasons it operates so
nicely when in the normal position.) So, you flop the head over and
then have to adjust the pretension to match the ninety degree
position. Then you go back to vertical and again have to reset the
pretension for the normal position.
Another aggravation to me is that when you flop the ball over the
upper part of the ball has to fall into a slot in the ball carrier
for it to reach the ninety degree position. This slot is at ninety
degrees to the tension knob which also means that the knob ends up
pointing at you or away from you with the ball flopped over. That's
ninety degrees from where I normally keep the knob positioned and I
end up fumbling around trying to find it while keeping the subject
framed properly with a camera that's out of balance. Also, with the
camera flopped over and the ball in the slot, you can't rotate the
camera horizontally as you normally would. You have to rotate the
head itself in relation to the tripod legs which means finding the
knob, which I seldom use otherwise, that locks that movement.
All the problems associated with flopping the ball head over are
eliminated when you have an L bracket. Want to go from horizontal to
vertical? Just released the tension on the QR plate, slide the
camera out, rotate it to the vertical, slide the QR plate back in and
tighten. That takes about 15-20 seconds and then the camera/ball
head works the same as before - same pretension and same knob
positions. Going back to horizontal is just as easy.
>So why would anyone want an L bracket?
I can't think of any reason offhand that you wouldn't want one, if
you use a quality ball head and shoot from a tripod a lot, except for
the extra cost.
Of course, YMMV. :-)
Later,
Johnny
__________________________
Johnny Johnson
Cleveland, GA
mailto:jjohnso4@xxxxxxxxxx
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