sk66
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I received my new GHFG1 yesterday from Adorama (that was quick!) and I spent some time going over it.
But first a little background. I started shooting with big lenses way back before gimbal heads were introduced to photography, or at least they were not common. And I used to use a large/heavy video fluid head then. Since then I've owned/used various gimbal heads (Wimberley, Benro, ProMediaGear, etc) over the years. And for the last several years I have abandoned them altogether and have been using a leveling pan/tilt head instead. I've often wanted to go back to a fluid head but there wasn't an option I could justify... video heads up to the task are big/heavy/expensive. RRS makes a fluid gimbal that I highly suspect is better, but it costs 3x as much as this head.
The reason I wanted a fluid head is because a little bit of resistance goes a long way towards eliminating wobbles and camera shake ensuring smoother movements/tracking and sharper images. Part of the reason I quit using gimbal heads as none of them had very good drag systems. And then this thing shows up on the market and at a very reasonable price! My main concerns were that there weren't any good reviews and everything I saw had smaller kit mounted. It's only rated to 17.64 lbs and the camera/lens combination I primarily use weighs right at 15lbs. My general rule of thumb for tripods/heads is that they should be rated for at least 2x what you're going to put on it if you want any real stability/reliability. Having taken this thing completely apart, I am quite confident the noted limit is for optimum performance and not structural.
Here's a stock image as I didn't take any "overview" pictures.
The first thing I noticed was that it's big/chunky. I don't really care because it doesn't weigh a lot, it's just under 3lbs/1.4kg, just slightly less than the Wimberley WH-200 and most other comparables. The knobs are nice and large with rubberized grips, both are big pluses in cold weather.
When it was delivered it was quite cold, it was right about freezing out and I guess the truck wasn't heated. Right away I mounted it on my tripod and I noticed the drag levels seemed quite high, more on that later. The next thing I did was check for play/function of the various bits.
One thing I always do is check to see if the knobs are captive or if they might be prone to working loose and falling off. Especially with something like this where the knobs will generally be left loose. The knobs are captive, or rather I believe they are meant to be... the tilt knob came off. The knobs also have a lot of range that is useless, they go from completely off to "locked" in about 1/2 turn. The other knobs are of the spring indexed type where the knob can be repositioned.
In the end I put a tiny bit of lightweight loctite on the retaining screw (the blurry part with GITZO on it) and put it back together...problem solved. But when it came off I found my first discovery... this head uses proper "finned" type fluid (grease) cartridges top and bottom... at this price I wasn't sure it would. This isn't the only way to make a fluid head, but it's a common way found on many more expensive video heads.
The specs for the head states that the tilt azimuth has "fluid cartridge with fixed drag," but I wouldn't quite agree with that. The way the tilt locking knob functions is by pulling these two components together until the swing arm binds against the fiber washer. When you compress the grease into a smaller area it increases the resistance somewhat. But the range of adjustment is quite small. With the locking knob full loose these parts are the farthest apart. They're still close enough to be "sealed" I would say, but that allows a bit more room for the grease to move around in. And since it's the grease that keeps those concentric fins separated/centered, that leads to a slight amount of lateral give to the swingarm... I do *not* think it's really anything to be concerned with.
Once it was back together I mounted my camera/lens on it and centered it's CG at the pivot point. It's a D5 and 400/2.8. and the lens has a low foot with integrated arca swiss groves. I found that the safety pin in the clamp interfered with my lens foot and needed to be removed. Both the setup and pin issue are well described in the manual... and that's all that is explained. It also warns that there is no safety with the pin removed, but my lens foot has the safety stops at either end so it's a non-issue.
I then went to mount the pan bar out of curiosity. This is when I realized that the mounting knob for the pan bar has very limited travel unless the cradle is fully lowered... the indexing capability helps, but not enough IMO. With this particular camera/lens combination the bar isn't any farther out than the camera body is. It's only about 11" max (it can be set a bit shorter). With the low foot on the lens the arm barely clears the camera body, and if angled upwards it contacts the camera body. The length and angle of pan bar are personal preference, but a longer arm provides for finer/smoother control. None of this much matters to me as I bought this for photography, not video. But if I were going to use this for video with this kind of combination I would want a longer bar and probably more clearance.
The specifications for the pan axis sates that it has "1 step plus variable PTFE friction". In this case it's true. The pan locking knob simply pushes a small aluminum block against the outside of the base... this is not a very smooth friction for adding dampening, and it's not intended to be. But it's also "open" to getting grit in there... IMO, that's a potential problem. You can see the block in this picture.
more to follow (maxed out the images)
But first a little background. I started shooting with big lenses way back before gimbal heads were introduced to photography, or at least they were not common. And I used to use a large/heavy video fluid head then. Since then I've owned/used various gimbal heads (Wimberley, Benro, ProMediaGear, etc) over the years. And for the last several years I have abandoned them altogether and have been using a leveling pan/tilt head instead. I've often wanted to go back to a fluid head but there wasn't an option I could justify... video heads up to the task are big/heavy/expensive. RRS makes a fluid gimbal that I highly suspect is better, but it costs 3x as much as this head.
The reason I wanted a fluid head is because a little bit of resistance goes a long way towards eliminating wobbles and camera shake ensuring smoother movements/tracking and sharper images. Part of the reason I quit using gimbal heads as none of them had very good drag systems. And then this thing shows up on the market and at a very reasonable price! My main concerns were that there weren't any good reviews and everything I saw had smaller kit mounted. It's only rated to 17.64 lbs and the camera/lens combination I primarily use weighs right at 15lbs. My general rule of thumb for tripods/heads is that they should be rated for at least 2x what you're going to put on it if you want any real stability/reliability. Having taken this thing completely apart, I am quite confident the noted limit is for optimum performance and not structural.
Here's a stock image as I didn't take any "overview" pictures.
The first thing I noticed was that it's big/chunky. I don't really care because it doesn't weigh a lot, it's just under 3lbs/1.4kg, just slightly less than the Wimberley WH-200 and most other comparables. The knobs are nice and large with rubberized grips, both are big pluses in cold weather.
When it was delivered it was quite cold, it was right about freezing out and I guess the truck wasn't heated. Right away I mounted it on my tripod and I noticed the drag levels seemed quite high, more on that later. The next thing I did was check for play/function of the various bits.
One thing I always do is check to see if the knobs are captive or if they might be prone to working loose and falling off. Especially with something like this where the knobs will generally be left loose. The knobs are captive, or rather I believe they are meant to be... the tilt knob came off. The knobs also have a lot of range that is useless, they go from completely off to "locked" in about 1/2 turn. The other knobs are of the spring indexed type where the knob can be repositioned.
In the end I put a tiny bit of lightweight loctite on the retaining screw (the blurry part with GITZO on it) and put it back together...problem solved. But when it came off I found my first discovery... this head uses proper "finned" type fluid (grease) cartridges top and bottom... at this price I wasn't sure it would. This isn't the only way to make a fluid head, but it's a common way found on many more expensive video heads.
The specs for the head states that the tilt azimuth has "fluid cartridge with fixed drag," but I wouldn't quite agree with that. The way the tilt locking knob functions is by pulling these two components together until the swing arm binds against the fiber washer. When you compress the grease into a smaller area it increases the resistance somewhat. But the range of adjustment is quite small. With the locking knob full loose these parts are the farthest apart. They're still close enough to be "sealed" I would say, but that allows a bit more room for the grease to move around in. And since it's the grease that keeps those concentric fins separated/centered, that leads to a slight amount of lateral give to the swingarm... I do *not* think it's really anything to be concerned with.
Once it was back together I mounted my camera/lens on it and centered it's CG at the pivot point. It's a D5 and 400/2.8. and the lens has a low foot with integrated arca swiss groves. I found that the safety pin in the clamp interfered with my lens foot and needed to be removed. Both the setup and pin issue are well described in the manual... and that's all that is explained. It also warns that there is no safety with the pin removed, but my lens foot has the safety stops at either end so it's a non-issue.
I then went to mount the pan bar out of curiosity. This is when I realized that the mounting knob for the pan bar has very limited travel unless the cradle is fully lowered... the indexing capability helps, but not enough IMO. With this particular camera/lens combination the bar isn't any farther out than the camera body is. It's only about 11" max (it can be set a bit shorter). With the low foot on the lens the arm barely clears the camera body, and if angled upwards it contacts the camera body. The length and angle of pan bar are personal preference, but a longer arm provides for finer/smoother control. None of this much matters to me as I bought this for photography, not video. But if I were going to use this for video with this kind of combination I would want a longer bar and probably more clearance.
The specifications for the pan axis sates that it has "1 step plus variable PTFE friction". In this case it's true. The pan locking knob simply pushes a small aluminum block against the outside of the base... this is not a very smooth friction for adding dampening, and it's not intended to be. But it's also "open" to getting grit in there... IMO, that's a potential problem. You can see the block in this picture.
more to follow (maxed out the images)
Last edited:
. But if cold temps can cause internals to come loose (there was no thread lock used anywhere) or the grease to gum up and become problematic, this could be an issue waiting to show up years from now. On the other hand, it's pretty easy to service once you figure out how all the parts are held together... maybe repacking it with a different/lighter grease would allow it to function better in colder temps.
