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.
Continue reading at The Digital Picture
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.)
