Anyone tried leveling base/ half ball tripod?

[brocksw]

Anyone tried a tripod with a leveling base or half ball in the field and put it through the repeated abuse of hunting? Seems handy to have leveling but would like to hear if anyone has experience in the field with them.

 

[MrSunday]

I use a Really Right Stuff TA-2U -LB leveling base. Much prefer it to the ball heads I have owned. I use it for optics, range finder, and my rifle. I find it more stable than a ball head as it's not fighting gravity as much when not in fixed tension. You get a little less angle with a leveling base but this can easily be compensated for by adjusting your tripod legs a bit. Rarely if ever need to do though. I have used this setup dozens of times over the last few years or so and am very happy with it.

 

[snowblind]

I've used a Gitzo tripod with a leveling base for many years.

Leveling bases are good at quickly providing a level camera/optic/rifle mounting surface that is unaffected by terrain irregularity or slope angle. To put it another way - It's a lot easier to adjust a leveling base than it is to adjust three tripod legs. Leveling bases are also not very good at tilt/pan as they are primarily designed to clamp heavy loads to the tripod.

The negative with a leveling base is that most are designed primarily as a base for pro video heads. In the real world that often translates into the leveling base being redundant for anyone who isn't using a pro video head with no built-in leveling capabilities. A ballhead (or similar) will provide many more tension and positioning options than a leveling base.

If you take a lot landscape photography or videography with the horizon in frame then you might like a leveling base. For most other use a nice ballhead (or similar) is better.


Matt