manfrotto 234rc2 only tilts sideways?

was looking at one of these for my monopod. It'd give me a tad more height and let me tilt the camera.
But looking more closely at it, it seems like the release plate is positioned so that the camera will tilt to the side, not up and down.
Is that the case, and if so is it an issue for anyone? I'll mostly be using it with my 100-400, so i can already move between landscape and portrait by loosening the tripod ring

You've been looking more closely at it in pictures online. If you go to the store and find one to play with you'll find that the ball is free to rotate within the base and the base is designed to rotate on the tripod.

mrklaw wrote in post #6150887
was looking at one of these for my monopod. It'd give me a tad more height and let me tilt the camera.
But looking more closely at it, it seems like the release plate is positioned so that the camera will tilt to the side, not up and down.
Is that the case, and if so is it an issue for anyone? I'll mostly be using it with my 100-400, so i can already move between landscape and portrait by loosening the tripod ring

You are correct in that it only tilts in one direction. Whether that is to the side or "up and down" depends on how you mount the quick release plate on the camera/lens. Since the camera/lens combo that I use it with has a tripod ring on the lens, I mount the QR plate to the tripod ring foot so I can use the tilt head in the "up and down" position and use the tripod ring for landscape/portrait orientation when necessary.

krb wrote in post #6150936
You've been looking more closely at it in pictures online. If you go to the store and find one to play with you'll find that the ball is free to rotate within the base and the base is designed to rotate on the tripod.

what ball do you mean? isnt this a monopod tilt top?

canonphotog wrote in post #6151152
You are correct in that it only tilts in one direction. Whether that is to the side or "up and down" depends on how you mount the quick release plate on the camera/lens. Since the camera/lens combo that I use it with has a tripod ring on the lens, I mount the QR plate to the tripod ring foot so I can use the tilt head in the "up and down" position and use the tripod ring for landscape/portrait orientation when necessary.

thats what I thought. The whole point of a QR plate is to leave it on the camera. So I wouldn't want to have to move it round to use on the monopod (although not the end of the world). but mostly I'll use it with the 100-400 so that could have the plate set sideways to give me up and down as you describe.

Could you mount the QR plate on the camera sideways and still use it normally on a 486RC2 ballhead? I'm thinking then not only will the plate maybe stick out of the bottom of the camera, but the locking lever on the head woudl be awkward to get to.

mrklaw wrote in post #6152275
thats what I thought. The whole point of a QR plate is to leave it on the camera. So I wouldn't want to have to move it round to use on the monopod (although not the end of the world). but mostly I'll use it with the 100-400 so that could have the plate set sideways to give me up and down as you describe.

Could you mount the QR plate on the camera sideways and still use it normally on a 486RC2 ballhead? I'm thinking then not only will the plate maybe stick out of the bottom of the camera, but the locking lever on the head woudl be awkward to get to.

I don't know about the clearance on the 486RC2 ballhead, but I did purchase the 322RC2 ball head to use on my tripod in conjuction with the 234RC on my monopod. If you leave a QR plate on the tripod ring of a 70-200 mounted on a mkIIn the orientation of the ballhead plate keeps you from being able to fully release the QR plate without taking the camera body off the lens. To overcome that 'problem' I turned the ballhead QR plate receiver around. Right now I have one QR plate on the bottom of the mkIIn and one on the bottom of the lens tripod ring. That allows me to move between lens without having to move the QR plate from the tripod ring to the camera body. As accessories go, the QR plate is not very expensive and I'll soon pick up a couple of more so I can leave them on other camera bodies.

I have turned the camera plate around on my Custom bracket QRS-35-H so that I can mount the mkIIn/70-200 f/2.8 IS combo via the tripod ring and still move it quickly between hand, monopod and tripod as necessary.

And on an off-topic note. The monopod I'm using is the Manfrotto 685B Neotec. Unless you're ready to buy one, don't pick one up and check it out.

jeromego wrote in post #6152052
what ball do you mean? isnt this a monopod tilt top?

My mistake, misread the model number.