I recently purchased the panasonic m4/3 to 4/3 adapter, to pair an also new (to me) standard 4/3 lens (the 70-300mm) with my Pen cameras. When the lens and adapter arrived, it was clear balance would be an issue when mounting to a tripod. I already use dovetail quick release plates on my cameras for use with a Photoclam ballhead, so thought I could rig something up! I came up with the following.
I purchased a quick release plate clamp, and also a 100mm quick release plate, both on ebay for a total just under $50.00. I've had the QR clamp for a week, and the plate finally arrived from Hong Kong just today. You'll see from the picture below that using the additional clamp, and long plate allows the camera to be mounted to the ballhead with the weight of the lens and body centered evenly over the ballhead, making movement much smoother, with less strain on the ballhead clamp, camera and lens mounts.
There is one thing I will still do. In order to take some stress off of the lens mount (that 70-300mm plus the adapter is alot of lens hanging off the m4/3 mount - I highly doubt it would break from stress, but it makes me uncomfortable enough to do something about it!) what I am going to do is purchase some sort of rubber knob (perhaps a doorstop, will have to hit up the hardware store), which will be screwed onto the 100mm plate, and sit between the bottom 100mm plate and the lens (I will have to shape to fit right before the zoom ring).
In the last picture I also showed how I will keep the stress off of the mountings by strapping the lens down so the whole setup can also be used in portrait orientation (obviously optional, I might never bother with that!). Anyway, without further adue, here are the pics!
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I purchased a quick release plate clamp, and also a 100mm quick release plate, both on ebay for a total just under $50.00. I've had the QR clamp for a week, and the plate finally arrived from Hong Kong just today. You'll see from the picture below that using the additional clamp, and long plate allows the camera to be mounted to the ballhead with the weight of the lens and body centered evenly over the ballhead, making movement much smoother, with less strain on the ballhead clamp, camera and lens mounts.
There is one thing I will still do. In order to take some stress off of the lens mount (that 70-300mm plus the adapter is alot of lens hanging off the m4/3 mount - I highly doubt it would break from stress, but it makes me uncomfortable enough to do something about it!) what I am going to do is purchase some sort of rubber knob (perhaps a doorstop, will have to hit up the hardware store), which will be screwed onto the 100mm plate, and sit between the bottom 100mm plate and the lens (I will have to shape to fit right before the zoom ring).
In the last picture I also showed how I will keep the stress off of the mountings by strapping the lens down so the whole setup can also be used in portrait orientation (obviously optional, I might never bother with that!). Anyway, without further adue, here are the pics!
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