bogen hexagon tripod plates

[BetterSense]

I have a hexagon QR plate for my 3047 head. Instead of a thumbscrew, it uses a flush 3/8 screw that requires a screwdriver. It's flat, so the camera sits down nicely even with the QR plate mounted. It has a 1/4 inch tapped hole so that the camera can be used with any other tripod without dismounting the QR plate. I prefer this to the thumbscrew-type QR plates.

The only problem is that it fits loosely in my tripod head. I have 2 other QR plates which have the thumbscrew design that fit fine. Is this flush-mount plate a knockoff made with poor tolerances? Can I buy an official Manfrotto equivalent?

[dsphotog]

Have you measured/compared them side by side? I have both styles of plate and they are the same size.
At BH photo, Manfrotto 130-38 = 3/8", Manfrotto 130-14 = 1/4"

[BetterSense]

That looks truly identical to mine, but I just dug out my older broken "parts" 3047 head and confirmed it doesn't fit that one either. The camera doesn't fall off, but it wiggles and the springloaded lever that is supposed to keep tension on it is bottomed out.

[dsphotog]

Good test..... they are $16-18 at BH , To be safe, I'd just get a new one.

[mdarnton]

This has been discussed here several times in the past, and it appears that the conclusion was that there are some fake (Chinese copy) hex plates floating around that are a bit small. Two posters solved the problem by (rather cleverly, I thought) either gluing a thin slice of aluminum plate on the bottom or shimming the bottom of the plate with a few layers of gaffer tape, to push the plate upwards to expand the effective size of the plate by grabbing lower on a wider part of the tapered sides. It probably takes hardly any tape to boost things enough

[mdarnton]

I just took delivery today of a head with a couple of plates, one of which was rogue, and too small. First, it was dead flat on the underside--no relieved metal-saving pockets cast in as on the real thing. Second, the screw had been inserted, then the threads deformed to prevent backing it out, which is not on any of my other six or eight plates. Third, the padding on the top, rather than being either smooth rubber or smooth cork was rubber with a cheap-looking pattern on it, and the general workmanship was just a tad fuzzy.

I'm pretty convinced by the details that it had nothing to do with Bogen or Manfrotto, and now I have a theory as to why it doesn't fit. When metals are cast, as they cool they shrink a couple of percentage points. I bet that someone took a real manfrotto plate, pushed it top down into some casting material--sand, whatever--and poured aluminum into that and quickly levelled off the back (which was, at that point the top). That would explain the fuzziness of the work, the couple of percent smaller size, and the flat bottom.

I tried a couple of layers of packing tape on the whole bottom to boost it up a bit, and now it fits OK.