Unique to the Arca-Swiss Monoball Z1 Ballhead is the aspherical ball. As the load on the head is moved away from center, the effects of gravity increase. To offset the higher gravitational effect, more ball tension is needed. Conventional ballheads require correcting tension control adjustments to be made. The Arca-Swiss Monoball Z1 Ballhead, because of its elliptical ball, automatically adjusts to handle the off-center load. In other words, the tension automatically gets tighter as you move the load off-center. And it works as advertised. Very nice.
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I personally don’t like ball heads that much. In theory, they seem faster, but in practise, they’re much slower for me than a 3-way tilt head. If you nail the camera position the first time, it’s faster, but how often does that happen in real life? For me, never. With a 3-way, I can get one axis right, lock it down, and move on to the next withouth screwing up the others. With a ball head, if you don’t get it perfect the first time, you have to start all over on all the axes.
Am I missing something? (Really, if there’s some way of using them that I’m not aware of, I’d like to learn it, because 3-ways are heavy and stick out.)
The larger Manfrotto ballheads such as the 488 that I’ve been using have a separate pan movement and lock. I was also concerned about the fact that you can’t lock in one movement and that loosening the ball to adjust one axis frees the other axis. I was a long time pan/tilt user.
Since changing to the ballhead I have had no regrets, it seems simpler to use and by keeping the friction lock partially on so movement is possible but firm-ish, the fear of everything moving when I just want to change one axis has proven unfounded. If you had a very heavy camera (lf or something like a Mamiya RB67) then things may be different.
Thanks, I’ll check them out!