ball head comparison question

I'm looking to buy a tripod and ball head that will last me for a long time. I've settled on the Gitzo GT3530LSV (using the flat plate) but cannot decide on ball heads. Currently, the longest tele that I own is Nikon's 70-200mm VR, although I have my eyes on a 200-400mm. With that future purchase in mind, I'm thinking about the RRS BH-55 or the Markins M20. Has anyone any experience that could shed light on the comparison of these two ball heads. Particularly, I'm interested in performance in tracking shots, ease of use under pressure and solidity.

-- Thanks, Dave

I have no experience with the Markins but have seen many enthusiastic reports. Hard to go wrong though with the BH-55 if the $$ suit you OK. I have no complaints with mine whatsoever.

For "tracking shots" ... what? Birds in flight? Sports? Motor sports? ... you will almost certainly want to add a Wimberley Sidekick for either the 70-200 or the 200-400, unless you mean strictly horizontal panning.

Nill
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www.toulme.net

more questions on ball heads, tracking, sidekicks, ...

Nill,

Thanks for your reply. As for tracking -- waterbirds in flight, sports such as surfing.

I'd hoped to use a ball head to track in the way I have been doing handheld. Only with the ball head, my hope was to improve my percentage of really sharp images. I don't have experience with ball head mounts and have only used pan-tilt heads which constrain motion to one dimension -- no good for my purposes. I would like to have a good solution before(!) I spend the kind of money that a ball head seems to require. I need to get educated about relative performance merits of ball heads and Sidekick. For example, how can Sidekick reduce (camera) motion blur if it moves freely about two axes? And, will a ball head really allow me to shoot while tracking (simultaneously panning, tilting)? Help from this friendly forum is very much appreciated.

-- Dave

PS: If permitted and if useful, I would upload an example of a hand held tracking shot of the type I take.

i shoot shorebirds here and use a 1325 with a 1321 leveling head and a full wimberly. my other ballhead is a bh-55. first, the bh-55 will be ok for, as nill says, horizontal panning only. well, you could loosen all the knobs and have it free but then it flops all over the place. one day i had my 300mm and only the bh-55 and i spotted some heron. it was ok, but the ease of the wimberly is addictive, and i wished i'd had it! and with the balance set properly on the wimberly the lens stays where you leave it when not shooting, for instance, focused on the bird. i've never used the sidekick, but if you're never going to get larger than the 200-400 i imagine it would be perfect. the ballhead alone will not suffice in the long run.
and while i own the rrs, the markins is a quality head, and was my second choice. ease of ordering and the pleasure of talking to the rrs people (and i suggest you call and talk to them as well about this issue) made me go for the bh-55.

It really is kind of hard to explain how great a gimbal head is to someone who's never used one. But just imagine something that (a) renders the camera weightless, (b) lets you point it freely in any direction, (c) stays there when you let go, and (d) in the meantime reduces *unwanted* camera/lens movement because the rig is supported and can only move in the directions you want it to move. Almost too good to be true, right? But it's true.

Better still, Wimberley has an extraordinarily generous (and confident, rightfully so) try-before-you-buy policy. Try it for sixty days, and if you don't like it send it back. They can afford to do that only because nobody ever sends them back.

Nill
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www.toulme.net

Thank you, Nill. Your description hit exactly the points that I somehow could not find in the web literature, at least not in the same sentence without a lot of adjectives. And the Wimberley policy is rather remarkable. I'm convinced. And thank you Marian as well for explaining the added benefit of gimbal mount over ball head.

-- David