Paul Jolly Photography Chapter 12

Tripod head

A cheap tripod has the head built in. Having it separate allows you to chose the type of head you need.
There are several types; the ball head, the pan and tilt head plus specialised heads (i.e. panoramic).
The Ball head gives fast positioning at almost any angle but fine adjustment is hard, as when released the camera can move in all axis simultaneously. The pan and tilt head is slower to position but, as each axis can be individually adjusted, fine positioning is much easier - normally it has separate controls for pan tilt and yaw.
Panoramic heads are special in that the vertical rotating axis is positioned in the effective lens plane (for a discussion of this see next chapter).
Motorised heads are also available, often used for remote monitoring with remote shutter control. One variation is the motorised panoramic head that allows a set of photographs to be taken automatically, the camera moving between shots.
This can also be extended where the camera tilt is also adjusted to give greater height to the image. But see the chapter on shift lenses for the problems this can bring and how it is corrected.
tripod_with_head