Which tripod head would suits my need! (50-100£)

Lemaildetom

Lemaildetom

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thomas
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Hi there,

I know not much about tripod heads. I'm a bit annoyed because I have a peak design sling but I still need to change the plate has the peak design plate doesn't fit my tripod head. I have a Manfrotto head which is one of the non compatible one.... So at the moment i have the normal peak design plate and the pro plate (ARCA and RC2 compatible plate). I would like a head that works with this!

So I am on the lookout for a tripod head to fit on my Vanguard Alta pro 263AT legs which is a tripod with a central column that can move in all direction. I'm not really keen on ball head.

I use my tripod mainly for night photography. But occasionally i could put on top a sigma 150-600c for wildlife.

Have you got any recommendation?
 
So far i had seen two head that looked good:
Manfrotto 804RC2 mark II
Manfrotto 460MG 3d
Vanguard PH-32
Vanguard alta PH-32

There's so many... it's really hard to choose. I know i could pop to the local shop and see but I live in Orkney and there's not really a local shop with some choice and i don't have any plan of going south any time soon.
 
For landscapes a 3 way pan and tilt head would be great but I would expect it to be a right pain to use with the 150-600 for wildlife. The problem is there isn't really one head thats going to do both landscapes/night and wildlife photography with wide angle to telephoto lenses. A ball head is what I would have recommended as a one head solution within your budget but that seems out. The other option is to get a 3 way head for your night stuff and a cheaper gimbal style head for the 150-600 for wildlife. Its not ideal but

A few years back I was looking for the one head solution as had got to a point where carrying two different heads for wildlife and landscapes was a pain. I settled on the uniqball as it gave the best of both worlds with the least disadvantages, namely it not being a true leave at any angle gimbal head. That was 3.5 years ago and I've not regretted moving to the uniqball, so much so I upgraded to the larger size about 2 years ago because I had changed to a heavier lens than the smaller size one is really designed for. If you are interested I have a couple of blogs on my website about my thoughts on the uniqball. The smaller uniqball is outside of your budget so perhaps isn't an option. Whilst I first felt it was more expensive than other options, once I had priced up the two heads it would be replacing it seems better value. I have since sold of the other heads I had and now only have the uniqball as it works well for my needs.

What head do you use at present?
 
Lemaildetom said:
Manfrotto 804RC2 mark II
Manfrotto 460MG 3d
Click to expand...
Neither of the above will be happy with 150-600 lens. Both use a relatively small plate and your lens/camera will be bouncing all over the place. I have never used the 460 (but I have a much older version of 804) so I cannot make any suggestion. These types of heads will also be useless for wildlife as by the time you tightened some of the knobs and tensioned something else the "model" is gone.

You should be able to pick an 804 from ebay cheap enough if you want to experiment (and pay a lot for delivery).
 
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There are dozens of cheap B&S heads around, many of which while appearing to be the same claim massively different weight capacity. I had looked at a Pig Iron BH1V which looked excellent for my Canon 7dmkii and EF100-400mm and cost around £60. I can’t tell you what it is like though as following advice from a similar enquiry on here I decided to invest birthday money into a Sirui K-30X which cost £124 from Amazon after applying a £15 voucher. The Sirui heads claim a pretty high weight capacity and I can believe it, my combination doesn’t move at all once tight. The only criticism I have is the supplied QR plate is so wide it obscures the built in spirit level. On the plus side Sirui use a cunning plate design that needs a button pressing to allow the plate to come off, making it impossible to fall accidentally.
 
GordonM said:
There are dozens of cheap B&S heads around, many of which while appearing to be the same claim massively different weight capacity. I had looked at a Pig Iron BH1V which looked excellent for my Canon 7dmkii and EF100-400mm and cost around £60. I can’t tell you what it is like though as following advice from a similar enquiry on here I decided to invest birthday money into a Sirui K-30X which cost £124 from Amazon after applying a £15 voucher. The Sirui heads claim a pretty high weight capacity and I can believe it, my combination doesn’t move at all once tight. The only criticism I have is the supplied QR plate is so wide it obscures the built in spirit level. On the plus side Sirui use a cunning plate design that needs a button pressing to allow the plate to come off, making it impossible to fall accidentally.
Click to expand...

I think these are all ball head you're talking out. I used to have one and i wasn't really keen at all.
 
I bit the bullet and bought a vanguard alta ph-32. I hope it will be fine.

I know for the long lens it's not great. To be fair every time i've used the tripod for wildlife i think one of these bean bag job would have work has well. I might have buy one of these to keep in the bag when going out!
 
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