Change your head

Six tripod heads that give geared control or are perfect for panoramas

It’s hard to do justice to a spectacular vista in a single shot. Your best bet is to take a panorama, a sequence of shots to be stitched together in postproduction. You could brave it and shoot handheld, making a mental note of visual reference points to help you line up each consecutive shot. However, you’re more likely to get a straighter and more seamless result by using a tripod.

Most standard ball-heads have a pan base that will keep things level, but a dedicated panoramic head will help you pan at perfect intervals so you’re assured a decent overlap between shots for optimal stitching. More upmarket options offer even more control, such as enabling you to position your Nikon to counteract panorama pitfalls like the parallax effect. Some heads move up and down to create spherical panoramas. If that’s not enough, electronic heads are capable of shooting supersized gigapixel panoramas, or even time-lapse video pans.