Thanks for the feedback & the links. The first article was illuminating and I was looking at the Gitzo line yesterday.
The 2nd article was a door opener to the realm of possibilities for head units.
From the first article, the following paragraph seems to the be the core guideline:
“The old rule of thumb was that your tripod/head needed to be 1.5x (or more) the weight of what was on top of it. These days, new materials and designs let you get down to about 1x--assuming that have a disciplined technique--but beyond that you're just asking for problems, especially with long lenses or slow shutter speeds.”
I currently have one of the ~$100 pods. In contrast to the thrust of the article, it works fine for all but long exposures with a long lens. In contrast to the comments in the article about legs getting bent, mine has spent almost 8 years dangling under my packs, tossed into car trunks or floors, or strapped to my bike, exposed to rain, snow, road rash and occasional gravel, and, and dropped more times than I can recall (the pod that is; not the bike). It still works fine. It’s even fine for long exposures at night with my longest lens – as long as the tripod is not fully extended.
My thought is to get another ‘pod dedicated for night time panos.
From the article I've learned to stay away from a single screw adjustment. For panos this kind of head is a disaster in the making.
Russ recently made a very good suggestion of adding weight to the pod, to help stabilize it. I always have a pack with me and it would be a trivial effort to tie the pack to the pod (and not leave the pack swinging in the breeze).
While I realize you get what you pay for, I have 0 interest in equipment as bling, so suitability to a particular task (night time panos) is all i'm interested in. Carbon fiber, titanium and so on are irrelevant, unless a compelling case can be made for their use.
Given all of this, and in addition to the suggestions above, what are some good candidates?
