Best lightweight geared tripod head?

[JeffKohn]

another suggestion could be an Arca Cube. very expensive, but an amazing piece of engineering. i played around with it at the last photokina, but never used it properly
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I have the C1 Cube. I like using it a lot, but I'm still bitter about the price. The reasons I decided to bite the bullet and go with the C1 were

1) Smaller and lighter than most geared heads, but still very sturdy.
2) Built-in Arca-style clamp, no need to jury-rig Arca clamp on top of proprietary QR system.
3) Dual panning bases makes it more convenient for shooting panos.
4) Design keeps the weight more centered

At $1000 I would enthusiastically recommend it, because for precision work I think it's much better than any ballhead. At $2K I realize it's a tough sell for most people.

I probably would have gone with the Manfrotto if you could completely remove their QR clamp and replace it with an Arca-style clamp like you can on some of their other heads. It's really a shame they made the QR clamp non-removeable on the geared heads.

[graeme]

I followed the advice of others on this forum and bought a manfrotto 410. I mainly use it for photographing stained glass windows. I use bracketed exposures which I need to line up pixel perfect ( huge dynamic range to deal with ) so that I can blend them using masks.

So far I've been 100% pleased with the manfrotto. It seems especially good value for money.

Thanks for the advice guys.

Graeme

[doubledark]

Does anyone know if you can remove the Bogen QR system & replace it with an ArcaSwiss type release, or do you have to screw the Arca Swiss release onto the Bogen release?
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Hi all

so in order to use the 410 head with the L bracket you also need a RRS quick release clamp; is this correct?

or is there another better option for a clamp?

thanks