We all know the importance of a good, solid tripod. Not only do they keep your camera still for the duration of the exposure, making them the landscape photographer's best friend for shooting in low-light conditions, but they're also a vital compositional aid.
Once you've roughly set up your composition, you can tweak the framing to an infinitesimal degree, to ensure that the camera is perfectly level and that no distractions are creeping into the edges of the frame, before finally hitting the shutter release to nail the shot.
But while it's the tripod that provides you with the stable shooting platform, it's the head on top of it that enables the fine tuning. How many times have you lined everything up perfectly, tightened the locking knob on the tripod head, only to see the camera slowly sag disapointingly by a degree or two when you let go?
When we buy a tripod, it normally comes as a kit, complete with a ball head. The trouble is that these kit ball heads are often built to a cost, to enable the overall legs-and-head combo to be sold at an attractive price point. As we start our photography journeys, budget is often a key consideration, so we'll look for a product that offers good value. And once we've made our purchase, we tend to stick with our tripod for years to come, perhaps only finally upgrading when the legs show signs of wear and tear.
But I would argue that, if getting your composition precisely bang-on is important to you, it's the head that you need to upgrade first. That's why I've just updated my buying guide to the best ball heads. There's one for every budget, from less than a hundred bucks to ones touching a thousand, but each is a solid, dependable device guaranteed to keep your camera locked in place just as you want it. I urge you to check it out today!
