Ethan: a levelling base is a bowl sitting inside another. The top one swivels on the bottom one. The swivelling is usually confined to small angles and do not provide the kind of movement ballheads or panheads provide. My guess is that their use is usually for movie making, where shooting is in mostly level ground. They are OK for panoramics too, once the levelling base is levelled and the pan head also levelled, the camera can rotate about and stay levelled. About heads: Some people do use those Gitzo or Manfrotto ball heads, which to me seem as rotating on a gravel soup and feel just as rough. The Foba heads (Sinar, Switzerland) are exquisitely crafted, very smooth and let you adjust camera position to the finest degree. The large one is heavy, 1.4KG, the small one about 0.6Kg. Both will hold a 4X5, the larger 8X10. The arca supposedly holds 90 lbs, which in practice means it can take 90 lbs to unlock it. Once locked your ball head has to go to the hospital, if not you for trying too hard to unlock it. Mine locked up once but luckily it had not reached the comatose stage and was able to unlock it with quite an effort. Lots of homely remedies are given in the LFF for unlocking these things. Avoid the disease and you will not need the remedies. Another reputedly excellent ballhead is the Kirk, made in the USA. They are very nicely crafted too. See tham at http://www.kirkphoto.com. The large one is about 900g, a new smaller one is about 600g. They have a similar look to the Arcas, without the freezing feature and are more reasonably priced than the Arca. Galen Rowell has a story about a locked Arca, you can get that in his site. About tripods, you can have the sturdiest of any mentioned but those very long exposures will also require no air movement because if there is, I am not sure if any tripod will be strong enough.
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