Extremely sturdy
Extremely smooth

Don't even go there

The BEST ballhead. If you've got the ca$h, don't even bother looking elsewhere. Tensioning and lock up problems that have been reported have never happened to me. I guess I've been lucky.

Similar Products Used:

Ballheads: Bogen, Kaiser, Linhof, Giotto

NICE CRAFTSMASHIP, SMOOTH MOVEMENTS.

Locks-up. This ball comes with a deadly dormant disease that can crop up at any time: leave your camera mounted on the ball and put it back on the car, only to find later that the ball locked-up and the game is over. Time to go back home. I thought I was unique, then I found out many other photographers had that problem.

Nice ball with lots of supporters but I am not yet convinced that their design is dependable enough to be trusted.

Similar Products Used:

Large Linhof, Foba. The Linhof is not as smooth as the Foba because it lacks Teflon friction pads.

Build quality, incrediably smooth operation,

Price

The best general purpose ball head in the market. The Kik can not even come close in terms of either ease of use or quality of build. Resale valu is also exeptional. The best mounting system available today

Customer Service

Not needed

Similar Products Used:

Kirk BH-1

-Easy to lock down
-Head doesn't creep
-Tensioning system that actually works
-Suitable for almost any camera

Can be hard to find.

The Arca-Swiss B1 is simply the best still camera mount ever made. Period. You'd think a good ballhead would be simple to manufacture, but almost every other one I've tried is substandard. The "tension" controls on most other ballheads are silly bits of fiction that perform no discernable function.

On the B-1, the tension control is a simple to use, precision mechanism. If you're using a setup where the center of gravity is close to the head, you don't even need to lock and unlock the head. Just set the tension, shoot, reposition, and shoot again.

As for the infamous "locking problem", it isn't a problem at all. Because of the design, on very rare occasions it's necessary to slightly tighten the lock before loosening it. That's it.

Customer Service

Never needed.

Similar Products Used:

Bogen ballheads
Misc. pan/tilt heads

Rock-solid, smooth, everything a ballhead should be

Very expensive
Vertical is slightly awkward

Not much to say here except that it has lived up to its reputation so far. Ball movement is smooth and the progressive resistance feature is a definite boon. The QR system (plate from Kirk Enterprises) is also the best available, in my opinion. At much less than full tension, it holds my Elan IIe with 70-200/4 and 1.4x teleconverter (no tripod collar) with ZERO slippage. The Giottos head didn't even come close.

I have the B1E model, without panning capabilities. When shooting vertical, the camera tends to bump up against the shoulders of the Bogen 3021BN legs, which prevents going fully vertical unless you adjust the position of the camera. Also, if you need to adjust left or right, you need to move the entire tripod. I suspect the normal model with panning capabilities doesn't have this problem, so I would recommend getting that, if you can justify the extra $90 or so.

Customer Service

N/A

Similar Products Used:

Giottos MH1001
Slik 444 Sport-II