That makes a lot of sense. Thanks, Johnny. The pretensioning sounds
like a nice feature missing from my Kirk.
Winsor
Long Beach, California, USA
On Jun 8, 2006, at 5:20 PM, Johnny Johnson wrote:
> 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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