Gitzo G1376M ball head review

Photography is a very costly hobby and it gets even more expensive if you try to save money by buying cheaper equipment.

This head uses off-set design, is rated to uphold up to six kilograms and made of magnesium, which makes it 20% lighter. The heaviest combination I ever used on it was a Nikon F100 with an AF 80-200 f/2.8D lens (the two-ring version) attached, which amounted to less than half the maximum weight that the head is supposed to support.

To cut a long story short, this head turned out to be a great disappointment - and for several reasons at that.

First of all, I had never completely gotten used to the offset ball head design. I could use it alright, yet I never liked it. It felt a bit as if I drove a car which had two stirring wheels separately for the front and the rear wheels.

The really annoying part, though, was that the ball movement was too rough and always made it difficult to position the camera precisely. I always try to compose precisely and use the full area of the slide; exact alignment is also important when you photograph buildings. This head brought a lot of frustration into my efforts at precise camera positioning.

Worse yet, there always was a very annoying sagging of the camera after the head was locked. To avoid the sagging I had to screw the locking knob in very tightly, but even this did not help much. I think the problem partly laid with the excessive thickness and softness of the dampen material used on the quick release plates (if I am not mistaken, they use cork). Also, the ball size seemed too small relatively to the overall size of the head.

Apart from this, I found Gitzo quick release plates poorly designed. As I mentioned above, the dampen material used on the quick release plates seems too thick and soft. Due to this, I had to torque the plate into the lens's tripod foot very tightly. This did solve the problem, though, and the connection would gradually become loose after a while. Another downside is that the anti-twist knob inside the plates is pretty much useless. Yet another drawback is that the plates have relatively sharp triangle edges and when attached to a Nikon F100, one edge would come out towards you far enough to hurt your body when you carry the camera with a plate attached.

A minor design irk that you probably will not experience with other lenses was that the head's quick release plate unlocking lever would hit the lens hood of my AF Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8D when putting the lens onto the tripod with the lens hood attached to the lens in reverse direction.

As you have probably noted, all of the above paragraphs use the past tense - yes, I sold the head after over a year of use and a lot of frustration. Selling the head was a major pain, too - everyone would look at it and say, oh, these heads are not popular and difficult to resell. I could certainly understand that and, to be honest, felt very sorry for the guy who would eventually buy the head from the second-hand photo equipment dealer I sold it to.

To replace the Gitzo head I bought a Kirk BH-1, which I am really happy with. The BH-1 cost me a fortune, what with the high shipping cost to and import tax in China, not to mention the high price of the head itself. However, after all the frustration with the G1376M, I paid the money quite readily.