The one thing that takes getting used to on the Majestic head and pod is a lot of locking knobs... You get the hang of them, but maybe usually shoot downwards by using the gear drive crank... Then one day out in the field you are shooting everything 45 deg upward, meaning the crank is now facing forward... Most of the rest of the head locks are reversed, so you have to think about it a little...
The center column extension goes really high, but shakey... But can be at full extension using strobe...
But I like this tripod, fairly strong but not very heavy...
Steve K
I bought my Majestic in '82 when I started school and it's still going strong today. My Majestic gear head finally crapped out when they were still around I asked them about a conversion from the old 1.5" post to a 3/8th thread and they had some really convoluted unnecesarrily complicated conversion piece so I went out to Industrial Metal Supply, bought a piece of 1.5" ID steel tubing, got out my acetylene torch and brazed up my own custom converter that now lets me put modern tripod head on with no problem. Still prefer the 5662 Gitzo whenever possible but the Majestic is good gear. The other thing I did a long time ago was replace the aluminum upper leg section with stainless steel as the aluminum always dented in when tightening down the lock knobs for the leg spread. That fixed that issue and added a whole 'nother level of rigidity (and weight) to the beast. Who knows - you may be able to find smaller Majestic plates for the top of your gear head. They did make them in a few different sizes.
Bookmarks