pied gyroscopique OR tête de gyro
English translation: half-bowl head
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| 20:06 Aug 6, 2006 |
| French to English translations [PRO] Tech/Engineering - Photography/Imaging (& Graphic Arts) / video camera equipment | |||||||
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|  Selected response from: Dr Sue Levy (X) Local time: 21:44 | ||||||
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| Summary of answers provided | ||||
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| 4 +1 | ball head |
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| 4 | COMMENT only, NFG |
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| Discussion entries: 5 | |
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Answers
13 mins confidence: 
peer agreement (net): +1
peer agreement (net): +1ball head Explanation: From the description, it's not a real gyro stabilizer. http://www.shortcourses.com/equipment/tripods/2-lheads.htm |
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11 hrs confidence:
COMMENT only, NFG Explanation: I feel sure Sue's answer is right in general, but I just wanted to add a couple of extra comments for the sake of completeness. 1) It would appear that the term 'gyro' here is being used rather imprecisely; there are such things as gyroscopic lenses for image stabilization etc., but apart from the fact that this would be a fairly unlikely piece of equipment to be humping up a mountain, in any case, they were only just about coming into use in the mate 70s, so probably a bit late for this context. 3) Katherine mentions the 2 different terms being used to refer to the same thing; the explanation for this is simple: professional tripods come in 2 parts — a set of 'legs' that have a sort of 'bowl' at the top; and a 'head' that has a rounded base and a big screw to tighten it. This rounded base fits into the bowl and can be oriented accurately, so that the head itself can be levelled, even though the legs themselves may be on uneven ground and not perfectly level. This sort of arrangement is almost essential when using a pan-and-tilt head, where the functions of levelling the camera and moving the camera need to be separate (unlike for stills). Back in the 70s, one of the few 'fluid heads' used professionally (the first to be patented) was made by Miller, and in those days both heads and tripods were pretty heavy (before carbon fibre and other materials advances). When using an old film camera, usually much heavier than a modern, compact video camera, a sturdy tripod and pan-and-tilt head capable of controlling such a heavy load were essential. 4) The 'ball head' proper, as described in the link proposed by Sue, is mainly reserved for stills camera use, or amateur video. The reason is simple: although it allows great flexibility and speed in levelling/positioning the camera, the disadvantage is that one locking device unlocks the head in all directions; so if you want to use it for movie work, i order to be able to do a pan, you have to unlock it, which means it goes all floppy in the tilt direction too, which is extremely difficult to cope with for serious work; traditionally, they have never really been strong enough either to support the greater weight of a film camera. -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 11 hrs (2006-08-07 07:18:49 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- Apologies for the typo: "late 70s", of course, and for getting my numbering wrong. Sorry, didn't sleep much last night! :-(( |
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