Wildlife Photography across the Water: Leveling base

Tuesday, 13 January 2009

Gear we use and abuse,Head and Feet

So you have saved enough money to get the Long lens you have been dreaming about for a long long time, Now other questions come up-Is my tripod and head up to the extra weight and if not what do i get,Well i use a Gitzo 1548 tripod and will cover lens support next week,Tripod heads-well there are hundreds of different designs,Gimbal,Ball,3 way, you have to consider carefully exactly what you want the head to do, Either way if you are using a 500 or 600mm lens its going to be expensive, You have spent a lot of money on the lens and there is little point in using it on a cheap head,If like me you want to cover animals and birds that move then you will need a head that has a nice smooth action so that once you have focused on the subject you can 'pan' and get a nice sharp image, I use a Wimberley Gimbal head-the WH200 to be exact-seen here with the flash bracket attached,Not cheap but beautifully made and very smooth allowing you to move in a left to right and up and down movement with a single finger when using a 600 lens,This also means that if you are panning, your tripod must be dead level-a real pain to do until i found the leveling head and with a quick release of the knob underneath you can quickly level the head and then then tighten the knob and job done all in a few seconds,Particuarly good if you are shooting when standing in water with the lens a few inches from the surface,

The leveling plate has a release handle on it so that once released you can quickly remove the Gimbal head and put another head on for say landscapes,For this i use an Arca Swiss ball head, Again beautifully made and i have had mine for a few years-now in need of a service and once done will last many more years, The thing that both heads have in common is that they accept a 'wimberley' type lens plate,these have a dovetail cut into them and clamp into the head,When i moved to Nikon i decided that i needed to save as much weight as possible and so doing i bought new feet for my 200-400 and 600 lenses,

The new feet are from a company called 4th Generation (wimberley do a similar product) they are made from a high grade alloy and have the dovetail already cut into them,These have a lower profile than the standard feet from Nikon and Canon and are very light-another quality product and come with an allen key and new screws-fitted in minutes and the low profile foot leaves enough space to get a grip if you carry your lens by the foot as i often do, They have a nice security feature to,If you carry your camera/lens attached to your tripod over your shoulder and the head jaws come loose there are 2 small screws that protrude to stop the camera/lens coming out of the tripod head and come crashing to the ground-you will see that on the 600 i only have 1 fitted the reason for this is that i like to get everything balanced and if i use/dont use an extender the screw gets in the way,so i always make sure that i have 2 fingers through the camera strap if carrying it over my shoulder just in case

Bio's

David Courtenay, a self taught wildlife and nature photographer, has been capturing images for over 30 years. He has had a passion for wildlife since early childhood and remembers being glued to the television whenever Survival, Wildlife on One and other natural history documentaries were shown. In the 2006 he swapped his established career for the life of a wildlife photographer, such a move demands a measure of uncompromising passion and commitment.

David has travelled extensively throughout Europe as well as spending more than 7 months in India working with local guides and trackers in search of Bengal Tiger, Asian One horned Rhino and Asian Elephant. He has also photographed Wildlife in Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, Sumatra, Africa, Canada and America. Working closely with Conservation companies he tries to raise funds to help Wildlife that has been put on the endangered list by poaching and habitation loss

Martin Dyer has had a passion for avian wildlife since childhood, particularly raptors. Photography was also another keen interest and it was with the specific availability and control of the whole process that digital offers that Martin was then able to combine the two in 2003. Based in the UK, Martin is a regular visitor to Scotland, specifically the Isle of Mull to watch the Eagles resident there. Other trips to Europe and around the UK are usually part of Martin’s agenda in a typical year.

However, as a firm believer on making the most of the local patch, Martin has spent a lot of time and hard work creating a wildlife garden which is reaping the rewards with many new species and varieties of wildlife. A keen member of a number of wildlife photographic groups, Martin is keen to expand his portfolio into other areas of wildlife, and has already established a wide portfolio of images of fungi.