Tripod Head Comparison for Real Estate Photography

Tripod heads come in a few different varieties and in this article I want to talk about the three main types of tripod heads for real estate photography and the pros and cons of using them for real estate photography

 

Tripod Head 1: The Pan-Tilt or Three-Way Head

The Pan-Tilt head is probably the most common basic tripod head and the one most commonly found on cheap tripod kits, although it is fast being overtaking in popularity by the ball head, but we’ll get to that in a minute. The Pan-Tilt head, as its name suggests, allows you to adjust your camera along 3 separate axis using either the panning mechanism or one of the two tilting mechanisms. These heads often have handles with large grips which allow for easier tightening of the tilting axis but sometimes they also have smaller plain knobs which are harder to tighten but are more compact for travel.

 

Pros:

  • Pan-tilt heads are cheap, and you can find them for as little as $50-$60 new.

  • They often come bundled with basic tripods, so you can start shooting straight away and because they are bundle their price is often discounted.

  • You adjust one axis at a time so once you get your camera level in one axis you can lock it off while you adjust the next axis

Cons:

  • Pan-tilt heads have more adjustments then ball heads, so they have more points of potential failure.

  • They often come with proprietary quick release plates which are not cross compatible with other heads.

  • They often have long and bulky handles which can get in the way when your packing your gear away in a bag

  • Making accurate adjustments is tricky with most pan-tilt heads as the tilt locking mechanisms don’t allow for fine adjustments with most pan-tilt heads with some exceptions.

  • Shooting straight up can be difficult and requires you to use your head back to front.

 

Tripod Head 2: The Ball Head

The ball head has rapidly become the most popular tripod head for sale as of 2018 and a quick search on a popular camera store website shows that ball heads out number all the other heads combined by at least two to one. Ball heads allow you to adjust your tilt side to side and forward to back with one mechanism and are a much simpler design than pan tilt heads, so they are more compact and quicker to use.

 

Pros:

  • Their small size relative to pan-tilt heads makes them easier to pack and carry around.

  • Their compact single ball design means they can be made into small and even micro heads that can fit on a cold shoe.

  • The simple ball mechanism has less points of failure than a pan-tilt head

  • Quicker to adjust your camera into position, especially off level positions.

  • Relatively cheap prices, not quite as cheap as basic pan-tilt heads but pretty close.

  • The tension of the mechanism can be adjusted on most ball heads so that you can decide how much free play it has which can help with finer adjustments and also in stopping the head from suddenly dropping under the weight of your camera when the ball is loosened.

  • Ball heads often come with Arca-Swiss style quick release plates which are universal over a lot of brands.

  • Can act as a pseudo gimbal head when using them with long lenses and adjusting the ball tension to allow easier movement.

Cons:

  • Ball mechanism is exposed to allow movement which can make it susceptible to impregnation by dust and other particles.

  • The nature of the ball mechanism makes tilting your camera to 90 degrees unsafe on lighter tripods which can be overcome with an L-bracket at additional cost.

  • Harder to make fine micro adjustments than some other head types.

  • Can drop suddenly with heavy cameras if the ball tension is not adjusted correctly.

 

Tripod Head 3: The Geared Three-Way Head

The geared three-way head is based on the three-way or pan-tilt head design with the notable addition of a gearing mechanism in each of the 3 axis of the head which allows you to make both coarse and fine adjustments to each of the axis of movement. This improvement over the standard pan-tilt head design means that you can very accurately adjust your camera to a level position faster and more consistently than any other head design and this is the head type I recommend the most for real estate and architectural photography.

Pros:

  • Quick and accurate levelling of all 3 axis without losing tension.

  • Mechanism that allows both coarse and fine adjustments.

  • Generally stronger heads that allow heavier loads.

  • Very sturdy/strong mechanism allowing for shooting at 90 degrees without an L-bracket.

  • More resistant to dust than a ball head.

  • More compact than a pan-tilt head with long handles.

  • Can get brands with Arca-Swiss compatible plates.

Cons:

  • Generally heavier than either a ball head or a pan-tilt head.

  • Some come with proprietary camera plates but approximately half of the geared heads now have Arca-Swiss compatible plates.

  • Mechanisms can be tight especially the Manfrotto’s but do loosen up over time.

  • Price, they are not the cheapest and start from around $200 for a basic geared head but the quality is equitable for the price you pay.

  • The very high-end geared heads can be a bit fragile and require more careful transporting.

 

Conclusion:

The variety of brands and the affordability of entry level tripod heads now is nothing short of amazing. When I started shooting professional 11 years ago the variety alone would easily have been only half of what you can currently buy from any large camera store and my first tripod head was a basic pan-tilt head that came with my first manfrotto 055B tripod. I used it for 4 years before investing in my first geared head, a manfrotto 410 Junior which has served me very well since. For real estate photography you can use any one of these three heads and get acceptable shots, after all the quality of your photography is really more dependant on your skills and your lens quality then it is on a tripod head. However a good geared head will save you time and more importantly, frustration as you no longer have to struggle getting your camera perfectly level. So my recommendation for any real estate photographer is to invest a few extra dollars and purchase a geared head and you wont regret it.

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Broken Hill Headframe

I imagine the we all have bucket lists with places that we want to see and experience before we get too old or die and those of us that do no doubt spend a lot of free time dreaming of those places. Well one of my bucket list places is or was Broken Hill. I have always wanted to go there and shoot photos, to shoot the desert at night, the mines and the ruins and find an iconic photo that spoke of Broken Hill and the rich history of its outrageous wealth and prosperity. Now I say it was because in May this year I finally got to see and experience this amazing place for myself. I took the wife and kids on an adventure along the Murray from Albury to Mildura and ending in Broken Hill. I know it's not the traditional way to get there from Sydney but I wanted to save to more boring drive on the Barrier Highway for the return leg and it seemed like a history lesson along the Murray would tie in well with our eventual destination of Broken Hill.

Anyway as a family holiday I was somewhat restricted with my photography but that's the way we planned it and we allowed time for me to get out early and late if and when the conditions were favourable. One such favourable evening was the very first night we arrived in Broken Hill. I had watched the Cirrus clouds streak across the sky all afternoon and I knew that come sunset something special was going to happen but even then I wasn't prepared for how special this evening was in the end! I quickly looked up possible locations for photography when we arrived at our accommodation for the night and found the location of a historical mining head frame in a reserve only a kilometre away, so without any further delay I grabbed my shooting bag and left.

The old head frame which was the location of one of the historical mine shafts was located in a reserve area at the top of the last remnant of the original Broken Hill. When I got there the cirrus clouds were streaking over from the west south west which was perfect for the location and the sky was already a nice aqua blue but there was a 4WD parked right in front, noooooooo! Luckily the owner came over when he saw me setting up my tripod and offered to move it! We soon struck up a photography conversation and he joined me shooting with his own compact camera for most of the shoot while we talked cameras, lenses and various settings as only photography junkies do! 

My initial set up was right in front of the head frame about 30 meters out in the carpark and I shot with my 14-24 at 14mm to keep my lines straight and the distortion to a minimum. I got plenty of nice shots but nothing outstanding, at least not yet.

After about 30 minutes the light started to die off and sensing nothing more special my companion packed up and left but I knew there was still a chance as the sun dipped below the horizon that something more could happen with such high cloud. So wanting to get the streaking cloud in a better position I moved from the carpark in front of the head frame to hill itself on my right hand side which would afford me a higher perspective to be able to get a better angle with the streaking cloud and then it happened. Within the space of only 1-2 minutes the clouds lit up a deep purple-red colour. 

I could not believe what I watching. In one of those rare sublime moments where you have to constantly pinch yourself, I was a spectator to one of the most beautiful sunsets I have seen in ages which had combined with near perfect cloud formations to frame the very object I was photographing. Or as they say, all of my ducks had lined up in a row to result in a stunningly beautiful photograph of an amazing, slightly haunting, location. Then after only two minutes the cloud formation fell apart on the right hand side and with another minute the colour was gone. All up there was a window of only 90 seconds when the cloud and colour peaked in the optimal position! I learned again the lesson to always be patient and prepared because that magical moment we seek as landscape photographers is often finite and fleeting but for me on this day, the iconic photo I came to Broken Hill to find was mine and I still pinch myself every time I see this photo, even today.

Junction Mine Sunset, Broken Hill

Junction Mine Sunset, Broken Hill

New Online Store Opens

I'm really happy to announce my new online store is finally open after a long slow process due to personal ill health over the last few weeks. Unfortunately I suffered a fairly severe injury which has laid me up and forced me to temporarily stop building my website. My commercial photography business is still running and I'm currently using the services of another photographer whom I know well to do all of my camera work onsite while I concentrate on post production from my office as I can.

The first six images I've uploaded to my online store are all winter themed images to celebrate the winter season here in Australia. Four of them depict mountains in snow in the Victorian Alps with Mt Hotham, Mt Feathertop and Mt Bogong along with a winter sunrise in the village of Dinner Plain, and two of them are from my Thredbo Creek series which is a series of images of unnamed mountain streams around Thredbo Village that I have been shooting over the last 5 years.

I hope to be able to add more images over the next week and eventually I will close down my old web store at Tempestlight.com which has become redundant now that I have moved my business over to squarespace.

Jeff. 

Mt Feathertop In the Alpine National Park available as fine art prints in the new web store

Mt Feathertop In the Alpine National Park available as fine art prints in the new web store

Amazing Sony A6000

Late last year i purchased my first mirror-less SLR. After several hours of research and looking at far to many lens charts and critical reviews i splashed out on a Sony A6000 with a standard 24-70mm equivalent power zoom lens. I was looking for a toy in the beginning and even after my purchase i was still convinced it was a toy, that was until i took it out for a bit of street photography in my home town and i was blown away! Now let me qualify something first, the standard power zoom lens that comes with the A6000 is not a great lens and it has some serious short comings including insane distortion at the wide end which includes vignetting from the actually lens front assembly! And it is fairly soft on the right hand side, but otherwise it is sharp, light and very unassuming. I quickly found that the overall extreme lightness of the package empowered me to shoot in a way that I have not done for many years and the 24MP APSC 1.5x sensor delivered outstanding results, especially in dynamic range which blew away my older Canon EOS 5DMk2. Then recently we took a holiday and I made the decision to use the A6000 a number of times instead of my D750 and I was not dissapointed at all! In fact the A6000 captured some stellar images and all in a package that is about 1/4 the weight of my D750 and 14-24mm lens yet packing the same number of pixels and one of my favourite shots is the one below which is razor sharp except for the sky which is the softer right hand side of the lens, i delibertly turned all of my verticals that way to keep the soft side in the sky where possible.

After shooting about 1,000 frames now with my A6000 I have found that one of its best features is its size and weight which allows me to carry it in my camera pack with my Nikon's and use it to find interesting subjects and angles before I even lug the full on gear out of my pack. It has become my exploratory camera which goes with me everywhere and gets used to test out different scenes and angles comfortably and without drawing unnecessary attention to myself and also for inconspicuous street photography for which it excels. But don't think that the photos from this are all test shots as Im finding more and more shots that the Sony has nailed straight off the bat and if i didn't tell you what camera I had used, you would never guess it was a sub $1,000 consumer A6000!

Dogwood or Dog and Log! Sony A6000 & 16-50mm Lens