WHY USE A GEARED TRIPOD HEAD? | Benro GD3WH Review

in this video I'm gonna explain why I love my geared tripod head and why I personally feel more landscape photographers should consider using them I'm gonna specifically discuss the Ben Rho GD free WH because that's the geared head that I've got and I'll provide a kind of mini review of this tripod head but I'm actually gonna spend probably a bit more time just discussing the concept and the topic of geared heads in general so just for a bit of context I have been shooting with ball heads for the last 12 years and I continue to do so I'm shooting with one right now the two of the tripod heads that I own are ball heads this is the only geared head and until recently I hadn't really considered any other approaches because as they say we don't miss what you've never had and I've always been pretty content with my ball head shooting however earlier last year I went to the isla sky and I spent a bit of time with a mountain guide their fantastic mountain guide and he particularly was shooting with this exact Ben Rho GD free WH tripod head it's a bit of a mouthful and I was very impressed with how he used it and it made me start to question my own use of tripod heads and whether my choices were ultimately the right choices for the way that I conduct my photography so kind of driven out of curiosity more than anything about six months ago I took the plunge and I actually bought the the Ben rode geared head and it was a bit of a gamble a bit of a step into the unknown but ultimately I feel it's a gamble that has paid off the primary function of geared head is to let the photographer make tiny or large incremental changes to their composition in an easy yet highly highly precise manner now to quickly just talk you through the actual controls and just generally this tripod head it might help you understand a little bit more essentially it's got three control knobs that control each of the axes of movement within the actual tripod head and the first knob at the bottom here controls your pan on the actual head and it gives a full 360 degrees of movement right round you've then got a forward and backwards tilt here and on this particular head that goes between 90 degrees and 30 degrees and then you've also got the side tilt at the top and that goes between 1990 and 15 degrees I tend to find that if the degrees of movement are restricting in any particular direction then you just may you can wear the other way and it kind of unlocks that perfectly but I don't have any issues with the restrictions and movement it's never restricted me at any point while I've been shooting with it at all the control knobs themselves are relatively easy to move but not too easy to move so you're never gonna knock them that's nothing you need to worry about but interesting each of the knobs also has a quick-release wheel and that means that you can make huge movements through any of your axes which is really useful for quickly setting up competitions the GD free WH uses an ARCA Swiss mounting plate at the top which is fantastic and also has a pull quick-release mechanism which makes your camera particularly safe in the lock there you're never really gonna drop it out of that which is great it uses a 3/8 of an inch screw to mount to your actual tripod it's generally very well engineered stable and I think it's got a magnesium alloy construction - it's fantastic it's got a maximum load of 6 kilos if my memory serves me correctly the tripod head weighs about 870 grams it has three bubble levels which makes it tremendously easy to level out in the field and just overall I just think it's a really well-constructed fantastic tripod head and I honestly could not recommend it enough I have been tremendously impressed by the GD free WH I think they need a better name for it folks it doesn't really roll off the tongue very easily now I'm just gonna give you a very quick demonstration on how you would use a geared head like this in the field so here we can see a typical self and the lights pretty rubbish today so I don't think I'm gonna be actually taking any picture but this is just for demonstration purposes you can see here on this wheel that with the quick-release wheel here you can very quickly pan across your scene and then you can make slight micro adjustments with the actual knob so when I get to any sort of composition I'll usually pan to the sort of area that I want to and then really for me it's it's about the up and down tilt then and you can see again you can control it on the quick release wheel so it's really easy to go up and down to get to the bit but you want to and then you can dial in with a high degree of accuracy and then you've got at the top here this is the side tilt I tend to use this less frequently than the other two knobs but it's certainly useful when you tripod is kind of on uneven ground for example but you can see with the spirit level in the back of the camera here that it's generally pretty easy to level off your camera and it really takes no time at all so what are the things that I particularly love about geared heads [Music] well ball heads are fantastic they're affordable they're easy to use and they're lightweight and compact and I think it makes them a brilliant choice for probably the majority of photographers to be honest but specifically for landscape photography I think geared heads really come into their own I know personally I've been striving for greater quality and accuracy in my photography and one of the big problems that I've always encountered will all heads is the concept of having to control all three axes of movement simultaneously geared heads allow you to control single axis of movement at any one time and when combined with small incremental geared movements it makes them extremely powerful for fine-tuning the composition to an incredible high degree of accuracy ball heads may be hands down faster but in my personal opinion they cannot compete with the relentless precision that a geared head has given me I feel geared heads suit a slower form of photography and personally is motivated me to get my compositions correct in camera and finding that I am using cropping and straightening in post significantly less since starting to use this kind of tripod head because generally and getting things correct in the camera and more often than not and it's generally made me think about the movements within my composition with an increased focus on individual axes of movement and generally I think that makes me more considered in my compositional decision-making the second reason that I love geared heads is I genuinely feel that my panoramic shooting has never been better as a consequence of using that and the main reason for that is when shooting with ball heads when you're looking at your sequence of images across your pan quite often you may have to make visual judgments on the overlap between each image or you may have to look at sort of difficult to view degree markings on your tripod head or you may just have to make a general guess at the actual movements within your sequence the thing with the geared head is though I don't need to do any of that slow process all I need to do is remember the number of geared tip turns in my pan and I can very quickly replicate that right across the sequence and I genuinely think the quality and the ease at which I take panoramas has never been better as a consequence of this because I can put my camera down level off my tripod and all I need to know is how many gear turns I need for the particular focal length that I'm shooting at once I figure that out then I can just quickly scan across the scene and it's never been quicker and more accurate the final reason that I love geared heads is stability now even the best ball heads out there will suffer from droop äj-- I love that word if they're not locked off properly or the carrying a particularly heavy front load so again at F 2.8 telephoto for example it can't happen with this particular geared head and I would assume all geared heads the zero chance of that happen happening this is hands-down the most stable and secure tripod head I have ever used I have suffered absolutely zero problems and that is particularly important when shooting longer exposures for example or at longer focal ranges where even micro movements caused by drew pitch for example can strip away your image sharpness I've been lying to you though if I said there weren't some drawbacks to using these type of tripod heads firstly they tend to be heavier and larger this particular gear heads the the Benro gt3 WH is slightly heavier than the Ben row equivalent ball heads that I was looking at I am carrying now on average about 150 grams more in weight which is an ideal basically the extra complexity of the tripod head comes at Cost geared heads will tend to be a little bit taller and a little bit wider than their ball head equivalents and for some that could be a significant factor I would say for those that highly weight and space conscious this is probably likely to be a showstopper but for me personally I'm prepared to carry that extra little bit of weight for the extra precision that this is introduced into my photography [Music] the second real drawback is speed there's no getting away from the fact that using geared heads is slower than using ball heads rather than controlling all three axes of movement simultaneously you have to control each one by one and however I personally found that once I got used to using the tripod and sort of conditioned to it I could still sell my compositions relatively quickly so in reality the actual difference could only be several seconds for those that value speed this is likely to be really off-putting but in my experience speed is rarely that important in landscape photography in that particular niche I don't even see this as a significant drawback it could actually be argued that if precision is highly important to you then a gearhead like this actually improves your compositional workflow and may actually allow you to get that precision quicker as the famous military saying goes slow is smooth smooth is fast so that's it for today's video and this little exploration into the world of gear heads as a closing for I would just like to make clear that there's no right or wrong choice when it comes to tripod heads simply go with whatever suits your particular style of photography best I personally have found that geared heads suit my style of photography best but it may not suit you perfectly so yeah this video is just designed just to give you some food for sure we say if you've got any thoughts on geared heads in general if you've got any experiences of using them if you've got any thoughts on the Benro gd3 wh then pop them down below in the comments I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts in this particular topic and yeah that's about it for today's video so take care everyone thanks very much for watching if you haven't yet subscribed hit that little button just below and don't forget to give it a thumbs up as well all of that really helps me out so I'll catch you all soon take care everyone [Music]

Channel: James Brew

Views: 58,918

Keywords: benro gd3wh, benro gd3wh review, geared tripod head review, geared tripod head, benro gd3wh 3-way geared head, benro gd3wh 3-way geared head review, benro tripod head, benro, tripod head, landscape photography, landscape photography tripod head, best tripod head for landscape photography, tripod head landscape photography, geared tripod head vs ball head, gd3wh review, gd3wh benro, best tripod head for photography

Id: qSZ9UEybDCw

Length: 14min 21sec (861 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 01 2020