What ballhead to get?

[Guy_Mancuso]

Oops pardon my second reply here on this thread , I repeated myself must be a age thing. LOL

[Eric_Chan]

I am going to out on a limb here and offer a very different opinion. After reading review after review praising the RRS BH-55, I decided to place my order. Just got it at the end of the last week and am extremely disappointed. There is no question that build quality is first-rate. I also appreciate the large main knob -- always easy to find and grasp.

I ran into two major problems, however.

First, whenever I tighten the main knob, the ball turns ever so slightly to the left. For wide-angle shots this is not a big deal, but starting with short telephoto shots and moving towards longer focal lengths, the image take a very noticeable shift. With my closeup work the situation is hopeless: the subject moves from the middle of the frame to the right side of the frame. The issue is repeatable: if I slightly loosen the main knob, the image creeps back to the left; when I retighten, it creeps back to the right.

Second, the ball operation (with main knob loosened) is not very smooth, esp. compared to a Markins M10 or Arca-Swiss B1 (I've tried these, too). I tried fiddling with the drag setting (from tightest to loosest) and regardless of the drag setting value, operating the main ball had a rough, jumpy control feel to it. Precise composition with the BH-55 was very frustrating. I also fail to understand the numbered drag setting. What do the numbers mean? I tried spinning the drag setting in one direction all the way, and it stopped at "3". This was the "loosest" setting. Then I tried spinning the knob the other direction all the way -- it went up thru 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, then wrapped around to 0, 1, 2, ... all the way up to 7. This was the maximum (tightest) setting. I thought the numbers were designed so that drag tension would be repeatable: but how can that work when I can get, say, the 5 value multiple times while spinning the dial?

For these reasons, the BH-55 is going back to RRS tomorrow. RRS makes some extremely fine products, but I am disappointed with the BH-55. After spending $455 and waiting for 7 weeks, I admit I had extremely high expectations. Unfortunately, the BH-55 did not meet them.

For those of you who have BH-55 heads: are you experiencing the same issues? Do you think it's possible that I got a lemon?

Eric

[Mike_Guilbault]

I'm considering the BH-55 so would also like to hear any opinions based on Eric's findings.

[DouglasUrner]

I'm on my second BH-55. The first one was very uneven in the movement of the ball. RRS replaced it cheerfully and the new one was noticeably better. There is a slight shift in the new one that I've noticed when locking the pan lock. Apparently this is a characteristic of the design and RRS declined to replace the head as they didn't expect the behavior to be any different with a new one. The movement is enough that it is difficult to do accurate composition of macro work.

I was told by RRS that one way in which the BH-55 is different from the B1 is that the ball is spherical, rather than elliptical. The difference that this is supposed to make is that the drag on the ball should be constant in any position. With an elliptical ball the drag increases as the ball moves away from the center (stem vertical) position, which helps to resist the increasing lever arm of the camera.

All in all, it's not a bad head, but it does have it's limitations and it's definitely not the transcendent experience I'd expected from reading some of the early reviews.

Doug

[Jamie_Roberts]

Originally Posted by Mike_Guilbault

I'm considering the BH-55 so would also like to hear any opinions based on Eric's findings.

No problems whatsoever with *any* stuff from RRS; I have two BH-55s and wouldn't be without them.

[Mike_Guilbault]

Jamie... how long have you had them? Do they handle a fair amount of rough usage - ie. thrown in a van with other stands and paraphanalia?

[Jamie_Roberts]

Originally Posted by Mike_Guilbault

Jamie... how long have you had them? Do they handle a fair amount of rough usage - ie. thrown in a van with other stands and paraphanalia?

Hey Mike--I've had the most recent one since February and the other since last year--so not as long as some stuff we have, but long enough to know they're good for my purposes. Certainly build quality, like all RRS items, isn't an issue.

Heh--I try to not treat any of the equipment overly roughly, but I know what you mean--they've certainly been "thrown" in a van / wagon with everything else, and so far so good.

*I don't do macro work with them*--well, at least not hypercritical 1:1 macro work. Product shots are more likely for us, and for those, portraits, and landscapes (including some stiched stuff) they've been great.

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