Looks like I'm going to be shopping for a new card reader, my Sandisk ImageMate appears to have bit the dust.
It was working fine until last week, now it wont read cards consistently and when it does it causes Aperture/Finder/Disk Utility to hang when importing.
On the tripod head front, I think I'm going to order the Markins Q-10. Looks like a nice ball head, and it weights a lot less than the competition for the same load capacity.