and would like to know if monoballs are versatile, stable and robust enough for using with ..
Hello from France
To the question quoted above, I can answer YES as a happy user of an Arca Swiss B1 ballhead with a 5x4" camera. The Z1 is the new version, stronger, lighter and cheaper than the discontinued B1.
About versatility : there is a
L-shaped Arca Swiss accessory named "SVILT" that allows to transfrom a B1 or Z1 into a 2-way head, for example for bird photography with a 35mm or medium format camera equipped with a long telephoto. You flip the ball by 90° to the side down inside the head's notch, and you only use the lower panoramic movement (left-right) and one rotation axis of the ball (up-down).
First for use with a view camera I first bought a
classical Gitzo "rationnelle" 3-way head, model 1370 (now discontinued, remains on catalogue ref. 1570, similar to the 1370 but bigger and stranger) and could not imagine using anything else.
However I had the opportunity to exchange with LF photographer friends who were very satisfied of the B1 ballhead.
A few general remarks, not directely related to the brands
- ballheads for a given weight and size can support much higher loads than 3-way heads.
- for ballheads, the bigger the ball, the heavier you can support and the stronger the torque you have to apply to eventually have the ball slipping off from the locked position.
- in 3-way heads you always have a certain degree of load applied off-centre on the combination of plates and cylinders stacked one upon each other, hence the acceptable load is always smaller than for a ballhead and the risk of vibrations higher.
The usual objection against ballheads is that you cannot easily control fine movements with a ballhead, moreover rotations are not separate in usual ballheads, except the Arca Swiss B2 (now superseded by the Z2, which is lighter)
For landscape use, I just level the camera and eventually apply a panoramic rotation to adjust the field of view. I frame vertically with the camera's rise/fall movements.
I have the additional upper panoramic movement on my B1(
see here a similar configuration with the Z1-DP), and I have found that the proper setting of the view camera was much quicker with the B1 double-pan than with my classical 3-way head.
Why ? I just let the tripod legs fall unbalanced as they wish, I set the ballhead so that the camera is levelled
(I have built-in spirit levels on my camera's standards), the upper panoramic movement does the rest, with a rotation axis which is eventually perfectly vertical.
With the use of an upper panoramic movement, you do not need any additional levelling device. With my Gitzo 3-way head, I have to level the tripod itself by playing with the lengths of tripod legs. But you can add a panoramic movement on top of the large Gitzo platform, this solves the problem of levelling the legs and you no longer need the lower panoramic movement.
Another point, this time directly related to the Arca Swiss aspherical ball design, is that the natural instability of a heavy weigh on top of a ballhead is counter-balanced in A/S ballheads by the progressive friction provided by the aspherical ball.
In usual ballheads with constant (sometimes, adjustable) friction, when the camera starts to tilt, the movement accelerates because the torque increases fast when the center of mass of the camera is no longer on top of the ball. With the built-in aspherical progressive friction, you do not have this problem and it is as fast or even faster, to level a camera with a B1 or a Z1 than with a 3-way head.
I have little experience with geared heads except for laboratory use in optics, I probably do not need this extra level of fine control in photography so I'll not comment.
In the Arca Swiss catalogue, there is
the P1 ball head, which is an inverted ballhead with a built-in upper panoramic movement and no redundant lower panoramic movement. In its basic form this P1 head cannot tilt by more than 35°, but it is very light (500 grams) and extremely strong (carries up to 30 kg, the Z1 is rated even higher). If I had not bought a B1 before, the P1 would probably be my ballhead of choice because I
never use the lower panoramic movement of my B1-DP.
Between the "rationnelle" head 1370 and the B1-DP, which to choose ? I keep both. I use the ball head because it is compact and lightweight on top of a lightweight wooden tripod for backpacking ; when I do not have to walk on long distances, I use the 1370 "rationnelle" on top of a classical Gitzo aluminium tripod.