Wildlife Photography Equipment: Tripod Heads

So when you're out photographing wildlife chances are you're going to be working with some very big lenses which by the way, are also very heavy lenses. Now you could try hand holding that lens but when the lens weighs about 10 pounds, you're not gonna last very long your arms are gonna get pretty tired unless you're Popeye. So what I recommend is getting the right support for wildlife photography. The preferred tripod head for most wildlife photographers is known as a gimbal head. The gimbal-style head is designed to fluidly pan around easily, it supports your camera completely and when you have it set up on top of the head. Basically the head is designed so that no matter where you point your camera because if the center of gravity is properly aligned the camera doesn't move. So it makes it a lot easier to find your subject you can walk away from your tripod and your camera's not gonna go anywhere it's not gonna fall over. So it makes a great support and it gives you all the support you need when you're photographing wildlife. Now a lot of people do use a ball head when photographing wildlife, if you do I recommend that you get something first of all that's very sturdy that's built to carry the load of your camera and your lens, and also something that's got a leveling base and that is designed to pan because it'll make your job a lot easier. So for example, this is a ball head made by a company called Uniqball and once I have the camera on top of the head and I've got it tightly clamped in first thing I do is I level the base that way if when I'm panning around with a moving wildlife subject the camera isn't gonna go off axis, it's not gonna tilt so that it ends up with the horizon crooked. So when you have a level base you can basically pan around any position you're in and the horizon is always gonna be straight. Another option that is very popular if you don't want to have a tripod with you or if you're in a location where a tripod's not really gonna work is to use a monopod. Which basically is like tripod except it's only got one leg hence it's called a monopod, and once I get a camera on top of the monopod basically you just lean in to the position that you want if you have a ball head on top of the monopod that gives you a little bit more flexibility in terms of selecting your position and the monopod takes the weight off your arms and allows you to easily photograph wildlife. It's not as stable as a tripod but it should give you the stability that you need. A final option which is a very popular option if you're working from a vehicle such as a car or a boat is to use a beanbag, which is quite literally, as you can see filled with beans. So we'll just put the beans back into the stuff sack here I've got it filled with 10 or twelve bags of beans that I bought from a grocery store and what you do is if you're let's say you're in your car and you roll down your window and you put this over the car door edge and you use this as support for the camera so the camera can go directly on the beanbag like so and that gives you all the support you need when you're shooting from a vehicle and it's perfect. So turns out beanbags aren't just great for college dorm rooms, they're also great for wildlife photography.