My post from yesterday disappeared. My dear friend and landscape shooter Mike Jones flipped over my Kirk L-Bracket and wants them on his cameras. He currently uses pan/tilt heads and hates ballheads, but his tripod head (Bogen) is not steady enough.
so can anyone suggest a pan tilt head that will work with Kirk plates? His rig is a EOS 1ds Mark III, 24-70 2.8L; 70-200 2.8L and 300 2.8L so it would need to hold this lens range.
I use a Gitzo 1370M low-profile pan-tilt head for my 4x5 (Ebony) view camera, with a Really Right Stuff B2-Pro/L clamp to make it work with the Arca-Swiss system. I use ball or gimbal heads for SLR/telephoto photography, but for me as for your friend, pan-tilt heads work better for pure landscape work (whether 4x5, medium-format, or 35mm/digital SLR) because of the abilty to precisely position the framing independently on each axis. The 1370m is discontinued (though probably available with patience on Ebay), but in current equivalents I think you need to choose between the 2270M or 1570M heads which are respectively slightly smaller or larger than the 1370M. I like these Gitzo low-profile heads with a QR clamp and find them quite sturdy, but the alternatives I've examined which you may want to look at include: the Manfrotto/Bogen 410, the Arca-Swiss B2, and the Linhof 003663 3-way head. Hope something here helps.