bumpity do dahh bumpity day

My tripod will do that, but it puts all the weight of tripod head plus long lens away from the central point of the tripod making it a bit unstable. I've dangled camera bags off the centre to help compensate in the past.

Thanks to everyone with your suggestions. I will mull a little. My gut feeling is the gimbal, partly because I can see it having other uses as well.

Best wishes, Kris/

On rare occasions I want to be able to point my lens high up, sometimes almost vertically. My three-way Manfrotto head just won't tilt back that far. The problem is also complicated by often needing a longish lens such as my DA* 50-135 or DA* 60-250.

Any recommendations? I'm worried that most ball-heads might not be too solid with the 60-250 mounted on it and tipped right back. Would some form of gimbal mount work? I've never used one. Ideally, I'd be using a low ISO and a moderate aperture to ensure good image quality, so the shutter speed would be low and thus need a good solid mount (often 1 second or slower).

For the curious, I am wanting to photograph details inside historic buildings such as churches, which are occasionally right up in the roof or at the top of the piers.

Thanks, Kris.

Happy mid-summer solstice everybody.

Some lovely images there. 3 and 7 get my vote especially. K.

Hi Gwyn, great to see you back. Hope all is well. Kris.

Buy a metal one for a 28mm Takumar. They are pretty common on ebay.

Still available.

Before I got to the comments I was thinking "Gareth has nailed the BW conversions..." I'm glad I'm not the only one to think so given my monochrome addiction.

Super set of images. I love the phalanx of ducks.