2014-04-11T21:00:00
Rated 1 out of 5
Benro V2, nice design but unusable
My son bought the Benro V2 head for his Manfrotto 055CXPRO3 after sending back the Benro B3 head, which we found not smooth enough [uneven friction vertical vs. lateral] and cluttered with the extra [almost same size] friction knob.
We thought the V2 would be less confusing, better adjustable and smoother in operation. Far from it.
The appearance is nice. It is precision machined with no sharp edges and the plating looks good too.
The Pan Lock Knob with Base Scale is very smooth and locks well.
The mounting clamp works well too. The bubble level seems precise.
The mounting plate with the little rubber inserts worked for the Nikon D7000 base, but not for the small body cameras we have. These plates should have a complete surface cover and a recess around the attachment screw. Some camera tripod mount nuts stick out beyond the bottom plate [Panasonic Lumix] which means they touch the metal of the arca-swiss style plates before they have good contact with the rubber pads.
What does not work well with the V2 ball-head is the integrated Lock Limiter Tension Disk for drag control.
It's confusing at first, as it is not a friction control, just sets the Zero Point of the Tightening Knob to whatever drag one needs, depending on lens/camera weight. The idea is good and even the scale can be zeroed, but when one tightens down the ball a few times the drag seems to change with every closing and opening of the Tightening Knob.
It takes very little tightening to lock down the ball, but one can turn/tighten the knob far beyond what may be needed. We did not try, but it appears there is no hard stop at the tight end of the knob, or when locked down at maximum.
I'm sure one could get used to this slightly confusing combined action knob. We also thought that the knob/cap itself came loose after using it a few times, as it started to wobble a bit and had a gap we did not notice at first.
Also when the drag is adjusted, so that the camera and lens does not tip by itself, but can be moved in a vertical direction smoothly, horizontal movement was still locked up or much tighter. [same as the B3 ball-head]
But what makes this particular ball-head useless, is that the ball gets pulled down towards the vertical recess upon tightening and upon each opening/tightening a little further. And this has nothing to do with the weight of the lens. That means if you follow the rule of thirds and align your horizon, the sky is almost missing once tightened down. And it's not possible to push against this behavior.
I have an old Manfrotto 168 head, which supposedly is inferior now, but it does not show this behavior, or at least I can hold against this action and get it exactly leveled where I want it. [The little Giotto MH-1002 gets also pulled down when tightened, but it wasn't designed for large cameras.]
With the Benro V2 this is not possible. We rotated the ball and the position of the knob from left to right, but it always gets pulled down into the recess. The more one tightens the knob, the more the ball/camera-mount tilts.
There may be something wrong with this particular ball-head, but since there are almost no reviews on this model, I do not know how others fared with it.
Unfortunately we will have to send this one back too and check out different brands now.
This is definitively an item one should thoroughly try out in a camera store, if you have the opportunity.
Mike K.
