If you’re looking to add some diversity to your shots, perhaps by shooting from a higher perspective, there’s a new product on the market to make the task easier while keeping your feet firmly planted on the ground.Most panoramas are taken at eye level or above the head, and it’s a perspective we’re all familiar with. Agnos is releasing a new device that allows panos to be shot from several meters off the ground, anywhere up to six meters, giving panos a new point of view.
The idea developed during one of the frequent brainstorming sessions Martino Agnoletto (aka Agnos) and Luca Vascon had fallen into the habit of having over the course of the past few years, but the seed was planted a few years earlier when Vascon was working on a project. “The first time I did a very highly raised panorama was together with my friend Toni Garbasso,” says Vascon. “I was helping him in a large project regarding panoramic architecture documentation here in Venice. He had this idea of a bird-fly panorama, and found a VERY high Manfrotto tripod, an S2 with a full Manfrotto head and the 2.8/8mm Nikkor on it. A monster.” Both Garbasso and Vascon have a background in architecture photography and wanted to raise the point of view, “to transform architecture in object, to trick the scale of it, to straighten lines and to show the space defined by things on the ground, things you cannot do if the ground is too close!”
The prototype that Vascon and Agnoletto developed weighed a little more than 2kg with an iron-aluminum base, a four-piece carbon-fiber pole (each piece around 1.5 meters long, or high), a cap, an ending head (standard Agnos base with a small L-bracket, “just what you need to place the camera and lens on the pole on it NoParallax Point” says Vascon,) and a pole bubble leveler.
The prototype became the “Hook Pano”, which was designed to be as simple and light as possible. “No traditional rotator is involved, but there is a kind of base you throw on the ground and fit the carbon fiber pole on,” Vascon explains. “At the end of the carbon fiber pole there is a kind of ‘click-stop cap’. It is pressed on the ground for gravity and helps to shoot precisely.”
The Hook Pano comes in three models, each with six sections, and prices will range from 160 to 380 Euros:
- Hook in Fiberglass Telescopic, the telescopic cane is for a very fast operation, weight 1700 grams;
- Hook in Fiberglass Put-Over, the user raises the camer and the section of the pole to fit it on the larger section, weight 1650 grams;
- Hook in Carbon Strong Put-Over, recommended for heavier weight set-ups, may take two to three minutes to rise, weight 1775 grams. This last model has clicks-stops (2-180° / 3-120° / 4-90° / 6-60° / 8-45°)
Because it is modular, if you don’t like the standard L-bracket, or if you prefer the 60-degree one, or another Agnos bracket, you can simply order the MrotatorH with it, or share the one you may have on another Agnos head.
Visit the Agnos website for more details on the basic model, the MRotatorHDelta.
