Leofoto's perfect panorama accessories
Leofoto's perfect panorama accessories
Walking around with expensive photo equipment and a cheap tripod, I myself did it for years. Until a moment when I simply did not want to carry the tripod anymore. The tripod was too big and heavy, and therefore did not work comfortably. And that was really a shame, because your pictures just get better when you use a tripod.
Written by Robert-Paul
Robert-Paul believes that photography is the best way to tell a story or release an emotion, with his work primarily aiming to convey a sense of serenity and stillness.
More possibilities with a tripod
In addition to improving photo quality in many conditions, using a tripod also gives you more options.
With a tripod:
- you can photograph without movement;
- work with slow shutter speeds;
- photographing with grey gradient filters;
- taking macro photos without movement;
- photographing with tele-zooms;
- take photos with yourself as the subject.
Leofoto tripods: quality for a good price
So a tripod is actually very important, and every photographer buys one at some point. It is important which tripod you choose, because this determines whether you really (pleasantly) use the tripod. With a pleasant and light tripod you will really use it, and it has real added value. The price of a tripod is of course important, but besides the price, weight and sturdiness are also factors on which you can best choose a tripod.
Eventually I ended up with a Leofoto tripod, the Ranger LS-254C with LH-30 ball head. When using it, I immediately noticed the difference with the old, cheap tripod I was using (no longer). What an improvement!
A great travel tripod for life
I started looking for a good travel tripod because they are often lightweight and easy to use, yet offer sturdiness. The exact qualities I look for in a tripod. With a quick look at The Center Column website (Travel Tripod Rankings – The Center Column ), it immediately became clear to me that Leofoto scores very well on these characteristics (sturdiness, portability) and is among the well-known (and much more expensive) brands, but at a fraction of the price.
Leofoto makes tripods from carbon fiber, which makes them lightweight. Nevertheless, they are very stable. In addition, (sea) water has no influence on the carbon fiber. So they are sturdy tripods that you can use for life. The tripods from Leofoto are made of 10 layers of cross-woven carbon fiber. This is two to four layers more than other tripod brands. This makes them even stronger and more stable. Leofoto has so much confidence in its tripods that they give a standard 10-year warranty!
For the past few months, I have been working with the Ranger LS-254C tripod 75% of the time and I have really noticed that the quality of my photography has improved with it. I started using filters again and also took more time to take a picture.
Panoramic photography with a tripod
Now that I have a tripod with me at all times, I also started experimenting with how the tripod can contribute to making better panoramic photos, something I have been doing regularly for years. After all, there's nothing like a stretched-out, high-resolution photo that captures the vastness of our landscape.
I always made a panorama photos handheld and that produced decent panorama photos that were in focus even as a large print. With the right conditions, most cameras (or in my case Lightroom) can merge the photos into a usable panorama. But ... as a photographer I prefer to have this in my own hands and that can be done with a tripod.
What are the advantages of taking a panorama photo with the use of a tripod?
- all photos within the panorama are in focus;
- you get a panorama with maximum resolution.
In short, the tripod allows you to increase the quality of the photos but also to make the final panoramic photo larger.
Make it easier on yourself in post-production
When you hold the camera in your hand when taking a panoramic photo, it is inevitable that your arm will move up or down a bit. Chances are that it will do both. This means that Lightroom cannot use the entire photo when merging the photos. Below are two examples of composite photos in Lightroom. I have not cropped the photos to show that taking photos with a tripod is more effective.
The first photo was taken handheld and the second while using my tripod. As you can clearly see, the panorama taken with the tripod has much less cropping loss, which ultimately leaves a photo with 'more meat', a greater resolution. This ultimately gives me the freedom to change the photo to the format I want, simply because there is more of it.
Tripod accessories
To make taking panoramic photos even easier, I have three accessories in my camera bag:
Leofoto L-bracket
The L-bracket allows you to change the camera between landscape and portrait orientation very easily and quickly. This can often also be done by tilting the ball head, but if bumped, the camera can still move. With a camera in portrait orientation, you know that the camera cannot move.
"In addition, it is also true that you can use a lens completely differently."
In addition, it is also true that you can use a lens completely differently. The above picture could never be made with the 50mm lens, not even in landscape mode, because there would have been too little space above and below the subject. With the camera on the side, there is enough space to take a wider picture with a 50mm lens.
Leofoto Leveling base
The leveling base allows you to quickly level the camera without having to move or adjust the tripod itself. An additional advantage is that the leveling base ensures that the camera is level at the base of the camera, so the camera remains level when you turn it from left to right. This seems to be the case even without a leveling base, but it certainly is not.
Leofoto Rotator kit
When you take a panoramic photo, you want to make sure that you have just enough overlap between the photos so that the photos can be merged together without having too much overlapping. With the layout rotator, you can adjust how you want to take the panorama and what the rotator does is give a subtle click at the moment when you need to take a new photo to get the best possible panoramic photo.
With these three accessories, it becomes very easy to take a correct panoramic picture. It is important to already make good input for the panorama in the field so that later, in Lightroom, you can make a perfect panorama.
