Markins LN-D4 L bracket on Nikon D5 camera

New Panorama Balll Heads

Markins announced new panorama ball head which has QR-70P panorama quick shoe.





Usually panorama quick shoe or panning clamp has round shape.
Quick shoe clamp has a fixed standard width for Arca-swiss type plate.
So if the clamp part is of round shape, the diameter determines available clamp jaw length.
To get enough jaw length, the only choice is to increase the diameter.
For example, 70mm diameter body is necessary to have 56mm jaw length.
In round design, we can only get 46mm jaw length at 62mm diameter body.

While shooing panorama, one need to use so called nodal slide.
It is to set the 'no parallax axis' of the lens to axis of rotation.
It makes the weight center of the camera system quite off from the quick shoe center.
With a need to adjust the slide frequently and to hold the system securely, professionals would prefer longer clamp.
But these increase the volume and weight of the quick shoe.
Most professional panorama quick shoe follows this category.
This is one of the reasons many photographers are not opt to panorama quick shoe.
They are heavy and bulky.

Here comes a new idea.
Let the rotating body has dual elliptic outlines.
It cuts the volume down while keeping the same jaw length of the base circle(in this case, 70mm.)
And let four points to have contact with inner circle (in this case, 62mm.)
So the 360 degree scale and indicator arrow works like typical round panning clamp.

The body line also becomes beautiful to look and feel.

Bubble level and stopper pin for safety also integrated in its position after quite amount of design works to cut the weight and volume.



It took a design approach to put the quick shoe knob and panning knob at the same body. Which makes the height quite low but operation becomes easy and comfortable. Panning knob position is carefully re-located for easier handling.



One of the most dramatic changes is the newly optimized DDL locking mechanism.
It let the quick shoe compact and light but provides super strong locking of panning.

The idea starts with a wedge under the door.
It is naturally hold quite large load despite its small force to engage the breaking.
To increase locking force, the area of contact for frictional hold needs to be increase.
Two inclined surfaces provide much more contact area than usual cylindrical break.

It works like this.
The red breaking ring has cut open which is necessary for it to be assembled.
And one end of it is fixed at the inner body.
The panning lock pin pushes the other end of the ring.
While locking, the ring goes inside the disk and also shrinks in diameter.
So it holds the disk like the wedge does at the door.
The disk is also optimized to work as a spring to push and hold down the ring.

By torque meter test, typically it will hold more than 80kgf.cm with regular panning locking.
I tried locking the panning knob quite firmly than normal and the holding torque of the panning exceeded 130kgf.cm easily.

Let me check the figures here.
In panorama shot in vertical orientation, if the equipment weighs 5kg and the distance between the mass center of it and no parallax point is 100mm apart. (It would be quite rare to have such case.) It will apply 50kgf.cm to the panning.
It means the quick shoe has more than enough holding power.
Also it means it needs smaller torque from you to lock the panning.

Together with its low profile and weight, the whole setup will experience less vibration while shooting. Many photographers fail to make sharp panorama due to its intrinsic large off center of mass which causes the system vulnerable to internal and external vibration.
The DDL(double disk lock) mechanism is the key technology that makes this smaller, low profile, light panorama quick shoe possible.






To find out more on this product and panorama ball head from Markins, please visit here.
http://www.markins.com/4.0/html_en/pc.php

(For more information on 'no parallax point', I recommend this link.
 http://wiki.panotools.org/No-parallax_point)