Got this last week so had a chance to shoot with it at the weekend.
Manufacturer: Acratech
Product: Ultimate Ballhead
Price: $279, with the left hand adjustment knob and rubberized main control knob, from BHPhoto.
//www.acratech.net/
Along with this I also got a ReallyRightStuff (www.reallyrightstuff.com) L bracket for a Canon D60, without battery grip.
Initial impressions:
Wow - beautiful finish. Great piece of design with the exposed ball join - easy to wipe clean. Adjustments are easy, with the knobs locking tight, unable to unscrew off by accident, and generally in the right place. The whole head is really light (about 1 lb) and just looks damn good. Fitting on my manfrotto tripod was easy - remove the center column, unscrew the 3 way head, and screw the new head down, then tighten the lock screws and replace the center column on the tripod. Done in about a minute.
Controls:
Quick release plate to mount acra-swiss plates.
Tension screw (not supposed to adjust in normal use)
Main control knob
Pan control knob
In basic use, you mount the camera with the quick release plate, tighten it down and use the main control knob to make adjustments. Main control is easy to work with, gives plenty of range of motion and locks solid. You can also just loosen it and get some drag on the ball for smaller adjustments.
This really light head locks very tight with very little sag (maybe about 1mm on 100mm macro shots - certainly little enough to get used to very quickly) range of motion is about 25 degrees horizontal and greater than 90 degrees vertical. It held my D60 + 70-200 F4L at any angle I wanted to stop in, without any problems at all.
The pan head control works well to rapidly allow you to change the angle further and the combination of the main control knob and pan are much more flexible and precise than the 3 way head I replace with this ball head. It gives a much better experience for setting up and quickly adapting to conditions.
The L bracket was also very useful, giving better results than flopping the ball to the side for portrait/ landscape changes. The camera always stays mostly over the center column, the composition stays roughly the same and things just work a lot easier being able to quickly turn the camera from portrait to landscape, without adjusting the tripod other than a quick release/ tighten. The RRS bracket is also really nicely made, and allows full access to all of the camera controls (PC sync/ remote cord/ battery compartment/ USB tether etc) without removing the bracket.
I am really happy with this combo so far. I'll probably try a 'load test' with the D60, 70-200 F4L, 1.4x and 420EX some time this week as I have a couple of shots planned. If anyone is interested in hearing how this works out, just post here.
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