Mark Dubovoy's IQ180 Field Review

[Jonathan Cross]

I was interested to see Mark's video re shims and that he was adjusting in steps of 1/100 mm.  He seemed to be handling the shim with bare hands and just putting it in place with no special precautions.  At that thickness would not dust be a potential problem, and what about finger grease on the shim?

Jonathan Cross

[michael]

Finger grease is definitely an issue at that dimension. It's one of the things that makes the process quite finiky.

We took some "license" when filming.

Michael

[dreed]

In Mark's notes, he makes mention of the bubble level now being obsolete because of digital leveling.

I've found a somewhat unexpected use for hot-shoe mounted "bubbles" - "shake meter".

Rather than wait n seconds (and try to guess what the correct "n" is), I keep a very careful eye on the movement of the bubble in the spirit level. When that has stopped moving visibly, I then count out three seconds and snap.

Although there's another useful way to gauge shake - live view and then digitally zoom in to maximum.

[John Camp]

I don't have an IQ 180, but I do have a Pentax K5 and the electronic level is not correctly adjusted. I don't know why this is, but when I looked around the net, it seems that a number of cameras have had this problem. It may not be a problem at all with the IQ 180, but these levels are not to be taken for granted, and should be checked for accuracy. I checked mine with a very good carpenter's level, which I put on a level countertop, shimmed until the bubble was precisely level, and then took a shot of the level with the tripod-mounted camera's electronic level showing as precisely level. It wasn't; it was at least three or four degrees out of whack.

[Jack Varney]

I am not sure that I would be confident of my "very good" carpenter's level nor my ability to judge the bubble position to within a couple of degrees. A few years ago I checked my best carpenter's square against two others. None matched and all were off a bit.

[Anders_HK]

I think John has a good point. Any tool or product have tolerances. It is not given that an electronic leveler is more precise. The advantage seems to be that the electronic can be integrated with the C1 workflow. However... a bubble leveler can be glanced at quick and without the press of a button...

[BernardLanguillier]

Verticality is typically much easier to check than horizontality thanks to our old friend called gravitation!

Just use a rope weighted with something useless to check the verticality of some vertical object and check whether the camera's sensor is accurate or not when aligning the base of the camera with this perfectly vertical object.

Cheers,
Bernard

[John.Murray]

I carry a folding fence post level and wrap it around the center column of the tripod - cheap, portable and fast.  Another advantage is leveling the tripod *before* mounting the camera, handy in bad weather.