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The View from the Top - part 2 of 1 2 3 4

Published 01/10/2008

The kit comprises four main components, the mast, the base, the pan tilt head and a heavy-duty plastic tool box on wheels, containing assorted accessories - guy ropes, metal stakes, spirit level, and, of course, the pan and tilt head and USB cables.

The camera is attached to a laptop (running the appropriate software) via a wiring bundle wrapped in plastic, which contains the USB cable and the pan/tilt control power cable. In my case the software used was Nikon Camera Control Pro 2.

Graham was concerned that I was going to be mounting my Nikon D3 on the pan/tilt head as the head is rated up to 6kg, and a fully loaded body with lens is knocking on to 5kg, so it's close to the limit. I must admit that on mounting the camera onto the head it did seem a bit lightweight and on pumping the mast up to height, even with the top two sections locked off, I was wondering whether it was such a good idea after all. I wasn't going to enjoy the explanation to the insurance broker. Graham did say that a heavy-duty head would be available and that a Wi-Fi system for connecting the head and camera is under final development.

I admit that I was probably pushing it a bit as the system is designed for cameras such as the Canon G9 (see the Tom Lee article and Mike McNamee's review) but I was after quality and the D3 with Liveview gave me what I needed. The new Nikon cameras such as the D700, D300, etc would, of course, be a more sensible weight option.

Canon offer similar

bodies. The Canon G9 also offers full zoom capability through your controlling laptop whereas this cannot be achieved with a manual zoom camera, which means that you have to guess at the zoom required and then adjust accordingly. This can be a bit tiresome, having to let the mast down, adjust zoom and then pump the mast back up. The pump action, by the way, is very light and easy to use.

I have now tried out the photomast under a variety of circumstances and weather conditions and have reached a number of conclusions and thoughts as to its usability.

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1st Published 01/10/2008
last update 09/12/2022 14:59:47

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