Round The Houses With Cullmann

The panoramic photograph seems to have been to be the soupe du jour - or is that the suppe di anno? Whatever, everyone was doing them them last year. As a number of manufacturers make wonderful equipment for the specialty, we hope they do them next year as well.

The heavyweight star of the panoramic brackets is. of course, Manfrotto,. The MH057A5 head is magnificently equipped for horizontal or vertical panoramas with a great deal of precision and repeatability. It can accommodate the largest lenses that one might choose and has adjustable click stops to let you take your exposures rapidly. It is super-engineered and so heavy that if it fell on you from a tall shelf, it would kill you.

If you wish less risk but almost the same expense, I recommend Novoflex products. They are also engineered but with elegance and style. They are also lighter.

These used to be the two choices for the big player, but now Cullmann has come out with a design as well. The Concept One system from Cullmann has a similar precision turntable that bolts on to the stem of many Cullmann ball heads. I should mate it to the 6, 7, or 8 series - or onto the dedicated Concept One heads. The big ones are BIG, so do come in and find one that matches your equipment.

The Concept One mounting plates are Arca-sized and I note that they make a corner mount that allows you to mate up two of their longer plates to make an L-shaped bracket for vertical mounting. Neat use of the existing equipment.

One final note - for simple panos with little cameras try the Panomatic and for even simpler ones use the Fuji X-10 and X-20 in the SP mode - there are 120º, 180º, and 360º settings and all you do is spin around slowly. In the case of the 360º one you spin around until you fall down...