Giving Head
No, I haven’t transformed the site into some sort of weird, clickbaity thing with lots of suggestive titles. we’re talking about the seemingly never-ending pursuit of a tripod head that works for me. It’s a total nightmare.
My job is relatively simple in the photography world. My gear requirements are quite modest, and my car is probably more important than the kit I carry on a daily basis to be honest. However, maintaining a steady camera while remaining lightweight and agile is the one thing I need more than anything else.
Tripod heads come in many forms and I’ve tried all of them bar the ridiculously expensive things produced by Arca Swiss. The ultimate tripod head is the Arca Swiss C1 geared panning Cube. It retails at about £2500 in the UK, although the classic version without panning ability can be snapped up for about £1400. This is Swiss engineering at its greatest - meant for the best architectural photographers in the world. It allows for huge cameras to be mounted and kept rock-solid, with the ability to make tiny and accurate movements with ease. There are now accurate Chinese clones of this unit coming in at about £400 - produced under the “Swebo” brand name (a knock-off of the “Cambo” brand beloved by all studio professionals).
Anyway, my job requires each interior image to be composed of between 2 and 8 shots utilising different lighting, but in the exact same position each time. I achieve this by using a sturdy tripod and tripod head to maintain a rock-steady camera position. I use a carbon-fibre Manfrotto tripod base as my go-to, and possess three more tripods for backups when needed. One of them is a gigantic Manfrotto stand that extends to almost 30ft, and another hefty steel Manfrotto 058 which is capable of handling larger cameras. For 18 years I used geared Manfrotto tripod heads of various sizes, but they kept stiffening up and proved to be too cumbersome for daily use on the road. The base plates are also some of the most unreliable things in terms of staying tightly attached to the bottom of the camera, and two of my camera bodies were actually damaged by them.
In the last two years, I’ve changed systems and converted to the Arca Swiss style of baseplate attachment. I bought a tripod head from a brand called “Sunwayfoto” - based in China, and based my decision on dozens of online reviews by trusted real-estate photographers. One of my YouTube heroes however - Nathan Cool - gave it a definite thumbs-down. I should have listened to him. Despite my efforts at tightening the thing up, there was a definite wobble in the mechanism when my D4 was attached, and this often resulted in misaligned frames that needed to be sorted out in Photoshop - often unsuccessfully. The problem lay in the stem which is just too lightweight to handle any substantial DSLR, and the gearing system seems to be susceptible to uncontrolled movements.
So - after a lot of research, I stumbled upon a lightweight version of the Arca Swiss C1 in cyindrical form produced by Leofoto called the G2. Another Chinese brand…..another risk. It was available directly from China via the Ali Express portal for about £130, and delivery was made in about 10 days.
This thing is as solid as a rock, and I look forward to using it in a couple of days for my next real estate job. It’s way lighter than any of my other tripod heads despite the solid engineering. I contacted Sunwayfoto with a view of getting a repair under warranty, and they sent me a couple of videos on how to partially disassemble the unit to tighten everything up. I tried and had some success, but I think that the internal parts are wonky compared to the parts in the video. I might have to send it back to China. Great.
Let’s see how the new one performs anyway.
