Ok…this is not meant to be a gear blog, but I just found a piece of kit that I’m seriously flipped over. I’ve been toying with the idea of picking up a new tripod & head for macro photography. The two tripods I have aren’t up to the task. Neither gets low enough to the ground and one just flat out isn’t heavy enough to support my new camera and old macro lens.
After looking around I’ve been focusing on Manfrotto (my other two pods are an ancient Bogen and a travel-tiny Slik) because of their nifty horizontal capable tripod and multiple head choices. When I went back to their website the other day, I saw this –
OMG. I wasn’t considering a ball head because I find them a bit awkward to manage with a large rig on them. I was leaning towards Manfrotto’s junior geared head both for its compact design and precision (as macro is my primary target use for this new rig, it’s a great option). But now this changes everything.
There’s even a little video on Manfrotto’s website showing how you can change the friction and therefore the speed of the ball head. That squeeze and release mechanism looks slick indeed. And you can change it from a right hander to a left hander which I might do since even though I’m not left handed I have a lot of dexterity with it.
So I’m going to keep my eyes out for when this puppy releases and see if I can find a store that carries it. I want to mess with it before I pony up cash, but I’m really jazzed about this design.
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