[stoppingdown]

I've spent three days in the Alps and I literally had a big feed of photos   I used everything from 10mm to 600mm and also did lot of macros, trying a new +3 close-up lens... Now I'm post-processing the photos and studying the results. Expect a few questions about different topics in the next days... 

 

 

First one, as per the post topic. I enjoyed the 150-600mm a lot, both for wildlife and landscape. I had a confirmation of my first impressions of two months ago, that my current tripod head is not good for it - well, it's not the tripod, rather the head. The lens is very unbalanced, especially when extended, probably also because the tripod foot is placed at the very back end, but mainly because of inherent limitations of my ball head. I mean, I've experienced the classic: frame your scene - tight the ball - stop handling the lens - the lens drops down a bit and change the scene framing. In most cases a beanbag did well, because it provided perfect stability; but only when the lens was nearly horizontal, or with a low elevation angle. In some other cases, when I had to point it up at more than - say - 30 degrees, I could not arrange the lens on the beanbag in a stable way. I had to keep it into position with a hand and I transmitted some shake. Given that I had to use shutter times around 1/10 sec (I was shooting at a cascade and wanted to blur the water motion) I had some hard times in getting a sharp shot.

 

I think that a gimbal head would make things better. But the classic manufacturers that I know are quite expensive. I see some cheaper alternatives, but I wonder whether they are sacrificing quality too much...