Bogen Pro Gear 405, 468MG ball head, any users?

[Capocheny]

Thanks Bill... interesting!

Cheers

[Andrew_4548]

Two of us bought the 468MGRC0 and 468MGRC4 heads, the RC4 version being delivered first due to the other being "not in the country."

The head is certainly solid (it was bought for occasionally holding a P2) but mainly for an Ebony. It was an attempt to convert me to B&S heads but it's not really my bag for architecture shots having used 3-way P&T heads for years. I have friends who use the 410 so took the plunge - I should have done ages ago and it would have saved me a reasonable amount of money over the years.

One thing to watch with the 468 heads - when the RC0 version finally arrived, it had a different pan lock - a rubberised round knob. This was OK-ish to use but I never felt I could get much nip onto it and the head "could" rotate slightly under load. The RC4 version has a lever arm which is a lot better solution and more positive. It's not possible to swap the arms easily as they have an M6 thread on the RC0 and an M8 on the RC4 so machining / helicoiling would be needed.

I asked the Manfrotto rep at a show and he'd never seen the two versions - it finally came back from Italy that the lever arm was the newer version as it was redesigned to beef it up and give a better lock...

So by having to wait for the second head to come in as it was out of stock, I was sent old stock after all - not chuffed

If I ever need the 468 head and the other person's not looking, it only needs something like a 6mm allen key to swap the heads on the bodies...

Andrew

[Frank Petronio]

I tried the 410 with a custom RRS clamp modification (ground off the awful Bogen QR). It had slop but had I known that I could have have tightened it up... dang. What wrecked the head for me was that it set the center of gravity so far off center horizontally. Using it with a 3-series Gitzo didn't feel unstable but the engineer in me didn't like the off-center aspect of where the camera ended up.

It also pissed me off on the Arca QR system after going through pains to use it on several tripods for years. While it works great if you have the right combo of plates and clamps, if you aren't using a RRS or Arca ballhad, adapting it to a 3-way head is kludge. And using it with a monorail is a kludge. RRS should design a series of good, solid 3-way heads. Gears aren't needed - just good leverage and balance so you can get the fine control that you want.