I don't need to be told to listen and I don't need your sarcasm. I've had
many ballheads over the years and the controls on some of them are very
poorly designed. My least favorite is the Bogen 3055 which uses levers that
rotate around the axis of the tripod post. If you push too hard on one it
can loosen the other one and is generally a pain in the ass. Before buying a
ballhead people need to think about the operating interfaces. If you
disagree with that, fine. The real test is "buyem and tryem" though.
You're too sensitive. I hardly ever resort to sarcasm, usually talk straight.
The controls on the Bogen head you mention sound ill-conceived--must be if
they're in the way. The controls on my ballhead are never in the way and
work smoothly.
Some ballheads (perhaps many) are poorly designed, I've no doubt about
that. This is why it's good advice to buy superior equipment to begin
with--then the issues you mention ought not to arise. To save a buck here
and a buck there, then complain about how the gear doesn't work right out
in the field, this strikes me as a kind of unwisdom.
The ballhead I own from Gitzo is okay (i.e., it does its job as billed). As
I've written here several times, my next full-fledged ballhead (should I
ever buy another) will be the Arca Swiss B1. This is based on feedback I've
received over the years from working photographers which seems to agree
that the B1 is the best all-around available.
Re the B1: there was an interesting forum exchange over on Fred Miranda's
site re the friction factor of that head vis-a-vis "binding" which, as it
turned out, was laid properly at the doorstep of operator
ignorance--apparently, users were improperly loosening the friction control
knob instead of the lockout knob, thus causing the first action to jam
against the second action. Meanwhile, the "word" was being spread that the
B1's were "no good."
Right.
By the way, I've no ax to grind either way. I fully understand that
pan/tilt heads have their proper place, as do geared heads. I can easily
see the use of either with larger, heavier gear, or when working in a
studio setting with light set-ups and plenty of time to get everything just
so. In fact, my first head was a pan/tilt job which sat atop my old Leitz
Tilt-all tripod. It worked just fine. I finally changed over to a ballhead
scheme because after working with a few owned by friends I discovered that
for most applications ballheads are simply more efficient, and furthermore
take up less space when packed. As far as weight goes, I'd guess my present
ballhead weighs about the same as the pan/tilt job I used to use. The Arca
Swiss is somewhat massive and I doubt I'd want to haul it around Europe on
vacation, just for example--in that instance I'd opt for one of the
mini-heads, like the one from Gitzo I mentioned earlier.
Tris
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