Roger Hicks wrote:
Well, the Arca-Swiss dovetail pattern is almost a standard, but after that, you have a four-cornered fight between price, quality, size and convenience. Relatively few people are prepared to pay for real quality (no slop, no risk of involuntary separation, and durability) so there are quite a number of competing 'standards': I use Linhof, Arca-type (NPC) and Q-Top. All very good: all completely incompatible; and all frighteningly expensive.
Cheers,
R.
And, of course, you must also buy a frighteningly expensive ball head and a frighteningly expensive tripod.