Project three: Essential gear skills - Level-headed landscapes

Ensure your horizons are perfectly horizontal with a levelling base. Adam Waring gets his head around it…

- Adam Waring

The Mission – Get perfectly bang-on horizons when shooting on uneven terrain with a levelling base

Time – One hour

Skill level – Intermediate

Kit needed – Levelling base – Tripod – Adobe CC or similar photo-editing software

When photographing landscapes, it’s desirable to have a perfectly level horizon. Most tripods have a number of bubble levels to help you straighten your shooting platform, and Nikon cameras that feature a built-in virtual horizon display in Live View mode make it easier than ever – at least for shooting a single frame. But when shooting a panorama, you’ll inevitably find that what was level in one orientation becomes increasingly off-kilter as you pan the tripod head to shoot the individual segments for stitching.