Ball head tripods

 

— in heads of this type, the platform is attached to the ball by means of a rod, which is clamped in a special mount. By loosening the mount, you can rotate the camera horizontally, as well as tilt it back and forth and left and right. The key advantage of such mechanisms is the ability to quickly change the position of the camera; in 3D heads (see related paragraph) it takes longer. Also, the advantages of ball heads include simplicity, compactness and low cost. On the other hand, it is difficult to turn the camera on such a head strictly along one axis without moving along the other two, which makes some shooting techniques difficult. In advanced tripods, additional equipment may be provided that partly eliminates this drawback — for example, a separate hinge for horizontal panoramas; however, in terms of accuracy, ball heads are still inferior to 3D mechanisms.