I'm thinking of buying a new head for a tripod. I have been using a ball head and I am happy with it, but I am curious about the pistol grip. When I bought my tripod this type of grip didn't exist, so I am afraid that I am clueless. Supposedly, it makes maneuvering very easy, but are there any annoyances? For example, I can see that a large grip can be more difficult to carry or fit in a backpack. Any other thing? Is the grip strong? Does it get loose after some use?
In summary, can anyone tell me about the annoyances and benefits in practice?
EDIT: I guess that I didn't emphasize that I am looking for the "small details". For example, if someone is considering buying a ball head I would tell him/her that the head tilts a bit down if the weight is close to the weight limit of the head, no matter how much you screw it. I would like to have that type of comments for the pistol grip, please. For the theoretical advantages (true or not) I already have google :)
Answer
I've used a couple of older pistol grip heads (Slik 2100 and Manfrotto 3265), and I really like the idea behind them. Squeezing a handle to free the head for positioning seems like a great idea. The problem I kept running into, however, is that I needed three hands: right hand on the shutter, left hand on the lens zoom ring, and third hand on the pistol grip. (You need to squeeze the handle to free the head, as opposed to a ball head that can simply be unlocked and move.) When using a prime this isn't a problem, and it's easy to zoom to a roughly-correct range to make positioning easier. Another problem was that those heads are pretty tall, and compared to a lower-profile ball head they did have a tendency to flop around more easily. Anyway, needing three hands was a problem I encountered regularly enough that I switched to a ball head, which I do prefer.
No comments:
Post a Comment