Geared tripod heads?

[Naddan28]

Hi,

 

I did a quick search and had no luck so thought I'd post directly. Does anyone have any experience with geared tripod heads? Specifically the Manfrotto 410 'junior'? I'm in the market for a new head, having had a cheap ball head which drooped and a slow and not much better 3 way pan/tilt Manfrotto head and noticed some solid reviews for geared heads.

 

Does anyone have experience using such heads? Specifically with heavier lenses and shooting panoramas?

 

Thanks,

 

Daniel

[NSFW]

I had the 410. It was great for macro work, but was heavy and bulky. I prefer a good, high quality ballhead for what I do.

 

If you end up with one, Hejnar makes an arca-swiss conversion kit that I highly recommend.

 

[milandro]

I have lots of experience with those geared heads and many other 3 way heads in all shapes and forms.

 

As Crunch Time says, heavy and bulky and only worth the extra weight and volume if you need to set your camera with much precision as in studio still life, macro photography and other such things.

 

 

 

These days a ball head with an arca swiss compatible slide and an L plate under the camera is all I need.

 

 

 

You can go very nice and precise with Novoflex or Arca but it will cost you. I bought a cheap Beike ball head and, yes it is not Arca or Novoflex, but it is very good indeed.

 

Not droopy or lame in any possible way and you can use it with one of the two frictions ( left and right) alone and it will lock well too.

 

They have it in different sizes and I suspect they make it under many brands. The only problem was, for me, the top element where the L plate slides in. It was made of painted aluminum and I didn’t like that, I certainly wanted anodized.

 

But you can buy hundreds of replacements and so I did and replaced only that part ( I re-used the part which came with the Beike to fit an old Linhof head that I had)

[Noel]

For normal use and especially for mirrorless systems such as the Fuji's a geared head is massive overkill so I'm not surprised you haven't had much response to this question as very few people have much use for a geared head.

 

I'm probably at the other end of the spectrum as while I do have a large Fuji setup I also use a Linhof Techno digital medium format camera and for that, a good quality geared head is a massive time saver and allows very precise adjustments which is exactly why I have the Techno in the first place.

 

Unfortunately my experience is that big is better so I went for the Arca Swiss cube which is a solid block of steel and brass. In my view its the best there is available and it suits my Techno perfectly. But, it would be utterly insane to consider using such a head for a Fuji mirrorless system, its way too much.

 

IMHO, after using pretty much every type of head and tripod there is, for a Fuji system a good quality ball head will out perform a lightweight geared head both technically and economically everytime.

 

Make sure you get a ball head that has variable friction adjustment. that will add just enough friction to the ball to hold it stead while not fully clamped down. Then to tweak the position of the camera you only need to add a little pressure to nudge the ballhead to the right place. Cheaper ballheads don't have this feature and they just flop about the place and is the main reason they are seen as a less secure way to hold your camera. A good ballhead properly used and adjusted will not flop about even when the lock is released.

[Naddan28]

Thanks for the posts. I decided to go for the Xpro ball head by Manfrotto in the end. Certainly rated high enough and has the friction controller you referred too.