William wrote: > > This part of the thread addresses some of my other concerns - camera support. My >current kit for Nature/Wildlife shooting is a Kirk ballhead and Bogen 3221W tripod. >The latter is rated to 13 pounds per the literature, and the f5.6 600 lens weighs but >7.25 pounds or so. Should be no problem, BUT the tripod mount on this older design >is at the very back of the lens, so it is very front heavy, and describes a very >large radius from it's mounting point. Any jiggle gets magnified out to the outer >element.
REPLY: The 3221 is not adequate for a 600mm lens. I would say that the limit for this tripod is a 400/5.6 lens. I replaced my 3221/055nat with a Berlebach tripod (www.berlebach.de). The Berlebach tripods are not expensive. Forget Gitzo, I own a Gitzo 505 and I'll never by a Gitzo tripod again. Wisdom among nature photographers around here is that no ball head can hold lenses longer and heavier than a 300/2.8. However, Bj�rn R�rslett (I can't remember his web adress but he is a well respected professional nature photographer with useful and critical tests on his home page) claims to have recently discovered the only useful ball head for telephoto lenses (whose name I've totally forgotten). Forget the weight ratings of both tripod and head. We are talking cantilevered weight here while the tripod/head manufacturers are not. P�l - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
