A few years ago I did not get the fuss that some photographers made about tripods. At that point, all I wanted was a stable platform for my camera. I had a reasonably priced aluminium tripod that came up to eye-level. You could even attach a camera to it, so what more could I possibly have wanted?

A little later I found that tripods are like lenses: You are always one short of what you think you need. My affordable jack-of-all-trades tripod was soon replaced by a sturdier version for commercial work. Since it was a bit on the hefty side I decided to add a half-height tripod for camping trips in the mountains to my collection. Did I mention shooting in the ocean yet? Salt water does funny things to a tripod, so I added a waterproof one to my collection. You see where this is going …

For years I had been shooting alongside photographers who use panoramic heads. For my style of photography I never really saw the need. I would shoot the odd single-row panorama, but I was totally fine doing so with a standard tripod head.

As more panoramas started creeping into my work, I encountered more issue with panoramas that would not stitch properly. Ridges in the distance would not align or my foregrounds had zig-zag patterns of misalignment running through them.