Tripod head where you can rotate camera in-place?

[Cerulean]

Greetings,

I am wondering if anyone knows of a good tripod head where it is possible to rotate a DSLR in-place vs pivoting the entire camera for portrait shots (or when taking panoramas in close spaces / objects blurred in both foreground and background with subject focused in-between). Would be awesome to know of some products that I could add to my list of things to get later

 

[Empty_Quarter]

What you are looking for is a ball head I believe. Plenty of brands around. I like Manfrotto.

 

[Cerulean]

Maybe I am wrong, but I don't think it is. I'm trying to avoid this:

That's what I mean by pivot.

I guess the better way to word what I'm trying to say is that I would like to ROLL my camera while maintaining the origin at the center of the lens (from a front/behind view), rather than have the origin roughly at the bottom-left corner of my camera body and effectively shifting the entire camera out-of-space. If I'm doing a panorama and I have my camera pivoted at 90 degrees (camera is no longer directly above the base of head/rotating point on tripod), it will result in some awful distortions in perspective.

This is what I am trying to do without moving the horizontal origin from the base plate/rotation point of tripod pole.

This is what it currently is (and as it looks, a ball head would be no different)

(was so difficult to find an example picture )

Another example how it is right now (the very thing I'm trying to avoid while still having portrait orientation):

The way I imagine it in my head is that you'd have this tripod head mount that is perhaps 1/4 of a circle ring; there would be a slider upon which you could calibrate the location of the yaw origin so that when you rotate your camera from (3pi)/2 to 2pi the center of your lens is maintained as much as possible at the same physical coordinates without ever having moved your tripod.

EDIT: ah, saw this on Google Images

 

[northrop]

^That's an L-plate, though. So every time you want to switch between landscape and portrait, you'll have to unlock the camera from the tripod. It does offer more stability, however.

 

[Daggah]

It's rather ridiculous how much l-brackets cost when you think about what they are, but I guess they're unfortunately just not high volume items.

 

[Grentz]

What you are describing is a rotating gimbal mount or what can be accomplished with just about any mount and a lens tripod ring. The issue is not all lenses will work with/have available a tripod ring and you will need one for each lens.

You are better off dealing with the tiny bit of shift you will get from a normal ball or tilt head.

 

[northrop]

It's rather ridiculous how much l-brackets cost when you think about what they are, but I guess they're unfortunately just not high volume items.

True, but it's basically a one time purchase (per camera body). So really, $100 isn't all that bad

 

[Grentz]

True, but it's basically a one time purchase (per camera body). So really, $100 isn't all that bad

$100 is cheap, RRS is usually in the $120-$200 range lol

Honestly the scarier thing is how much a good tripod/head will set you back.

 

[northrop]

$100 is cheap, RRS is usually in the $120-$200 range lol

Honestly the scarier thing is how much a good tripod/head will set you back.

All my plates are RRS, actually.

You do bring up a good point. My tripod+ball head set me back one grand. (Gitzo CF + Markins head).

 

[Daggah]

True, but it's basically a one time purchase (per camera body). So really, $100 isn't all that bad

Potentially two time purchase. If you get a l-bracket and then decide you want a grip later on...

 

[northrop]

Potentially two time purchase. If you get a l-bracket and then decide you want a grip later on...

Forget grips. If I wanted a grip... I would've picked up a D4 instead

 

[cyclone3d]

What you are looking for is a panoramic tripod head.

A panoramic head is not the same as a Gimbal head.

Such as:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pro-Panoram...363?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4d09511843

http://gregwired.com/pano/Pano.htm

http://www.nodalninja.com/

http://www.wikihow.com/Build-a-Panoramic-Tripod-Head

The Ebay one is the one I bought. The quick release mounts are not compatible with Arca\Swiss plates from what I have heard, and the rotator on the arm needs to be modded with a thin plastic shim to have good staying power. At least it didn't seem to be tight enough for me as it came.

The others I listed are probably a better option if you don't want to mess with having to mod it out of the box.

This type of head will give you exactly what you are looking for.

 

[cyclone3d]

What you are describing is a rotating gimbal mount or what can be accomplished with just about any mount and a lens tripod ring. The issue is not all lenses will work with/have available a tripod ring and you will need one for each lens.

You are better off dealing with the tiny bit of shift you will get from a normal ball or tilt head.

Nope, not a gimbal head. A panoramic head, made specifically to handle panoramic shots without having to deal with the misalignment.

No lens tripod ring needed.

From what I have seen, the absolute only purpose of a Gimbal mount is to give a good center of gravity for large lenses. Will not work properly for what the OP wants.

 

[Daggah]

http://www.diyphotography.net/diy_the_panorama_head_el_cheapo

 

[Grentz]

Nope, not a gimbal head. A panoramic head, made specifically to handle panoramic shots without having to deal with the misalignment.

No lens tripod ring needed.

From what I have seen, the absolute only purpose of a Gimbal mount is to give a good center of gravity for large lenses. Will not work properly for what the OP wants.

A gimbal with tripod ring will rotate the camera/lens on the axis the OP is speaking of, but yes a full pano head is probably better.

Gimbals balance the load around the center of gravity, which is very helpful when using a tripod ring. It also happens to enable the camera to swivel on an axis similar to a pano head (the side swivel).

 

[cyclone3d]

A gimbal with tripod ring will rotate the camera/lens on the axis the OP is speaking of, but yes a full pano head is probably better.

Gimbals balance the load around the center of gravity, which is very helpful when using a tripod ring. It also happens to enable the camera to swivel on an axis similar to a pano head (the side swivel).

You won't keep the nodal point with a gimbal though.

You could rotate the camera with the tripod ring for the one axis, but the other two are not going to be on the nodal point.

 

[Cerulean]

This is what I had in my mind at OP:

Without ever having to unmount the camera, once calibrated, you can rotate the yaw of your camera a full 360 degrees (no limits!) while maintaining the calibrated end-of-barrel origin (which is what you would have calibrated for), and with the optional piece be able to modify the Z-axis of the entire mount so that you can scoot the end-of-barrel origin closer or farther from the base/tripod head origin.

Now if you could somehow manage to fit this on a gimbal, then full 360-spherical capability is at your hand (though at that point you might be better off just buying a Gigapan Epic Pro robotic gigapixel camera mount). You would calibrate your contraption as such so that any rotation x/y/z you make, the end-of-barrel origin would be maintained as much as possible.

But if you're not aiming for full spherical and just want to capture simple panos by hand, a product like this could be cheaper and more flexible; more control in the hand of the photographer.

EDIT: Just to restate -- this isn't meant for gimbals or spherical panos. This would be a full-time dedicated replacement or add-on as a tripod head or ball joint head respectively.

EDIT2: I'm just looking for a simple way to rotate the camera's yaw orientation IN PLACE. Whether or not you use ball joint tripod head, when you change orientation you're shifting the ENTIRE camera into a totally foreign physical space; the origin is at the tripod head instead of the camera. The idea of having to completely remount (L-shaped bracket solution) I think is stupid and not practical / logical engineering.

EDIT3: "camera flip bracket" might be the solution. link just have to find the right one.

EDIT4: Digital Pro-M rotating bracket kit