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I'm using a panoramic head and a nodal slide for taking one row panoramas. However there is a knob to adjust the tension of the rotation mechanism and it is quite low so it always interferes with my mounting plate. For some angles I don't even have a chance to loosen it because the knob sits just too low. I managed to cut the knob so it can rotate a little bit more. This helps only a little bit. I think this head is made for smaller mounting plates. (See my image below)

I was in store and looked at all those alternatives. They all have this kind of tension knob sitting pretty low. Did you encounter the same problem? Or do you know an easy fix or an alternative?

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As you can see the knob on the right touches the mounting plate. Sometimes this gets stuck while rotating because of the knob and sometimes I'm not able to tension it. That is really annoying.

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Most of the knobs like that (with the end screw) can be pulled out and re-indexed pointing up. Other makers (like Benro) use a round knob instead.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Thats true but I tried already really hard to get it out. No chance. Its definitly stuck (or it cant be pulled out). \$\endgroup\$
    – Arji
    Mar 6, 2020 at 15:36
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Arjihad Then if you don't want to replace it with a round knob version you could probably make a spacer to fit between it and the removable dovetail plate (reattached with longer screws). \$\endgroup\$
    – Steven Kersting
    Mar 6, 2020 at 20:40
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You're right, the clamp on the ballhead seems too big for the size of the ballhead. That's not really a problem per se – it's not a big deal to mount a large clamp on a smaller ballhead, other than it might encourage people to mount larger gear on a ballhead that doesn't have the required stability (but that's another subject/issue).

Depending on the panning base you have, one solution is to remove the large clamp from the ballhead, and just mount the panning base on top of the ball directly. This may or may not be possible, again depending on the design of the panning base. But this way, the panning base becomes part of the ballhead, similar to this:

enter image description here

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  • \$\begingroup\$ The panning base would allow me to do that. But I use multiple tripods so I would always have to switch them depending ob what tripod Im going to use. \$\endgroup\$
    – Arji
    Mar 6, 2020 at 15:38
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Arjihad I had a similar problem, until I just mounted QR clamps on top of all my tripods, so I could mount different ballheads, gimbal mounts, etc., to different tripods. Maximum modularity. \$\endgroup\$
    – scottbb ♦
    Mar 11, 2020 at 5:36

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