📷 Enhanced Photography Stability: iOptron 3305A SkyTracker Ball Head (Black) Review

This is a very good ball head for its money. I have another one that costs a few hundred dollars more and I don't see any difference in quality at all. To be honest I wish I had bought it first. Then I would buy a second one and have more than $200 in my pocket.

Having hardly been used in the last 15 months since purchase, I noticed that the bottom locking handle slips in several positions. Shortly after receiving it, I noticed that its operation had changed when I set it up for astrophotography. This should be my mark for further investigation. I contacted Ioptron and found out the warranty is one year. They offered to fix the ball head for $30 and $7.95 shipping. This is so close to the cost of a new ball head that I'll skip the repair and let…

Ball head material quality is very good. But there is one big BUT, there is either a design or manufacturing defect in the ball head. The fit is too large where the ball stem engages the ARCA plate. The shaft has two flat sides that fit into the bottom of the ARCA plate. Either the groove is too wide or the shank is too narrow. No matter how hard you tighten the fastening screw, the plate rotates a few degrees to either side without much effort. I tried a Canon 60D with a 24mm lens and every…

This product works great. But some other reviews recommended it for use in astrophotography, in which case I should have given a better guess. Wide-angle lenses are fine. If you're using longer lenses (e.g. 200mm or more) you'll probably get annoyed at the lack of fine tuning. If your lens is pointing somewhere and you need to make a small adjustment, you'll have to loosen the entire ball, disable the entire lens/camera assembly, and then re-aim. The ball joint yields slightly under the weight…

What else can I say about this product? I use this for astrophotography where stability is important. It's rock solid and can easily support the weight of a Nikkor 180mm ED (an old style metal lens, weighs about 2 pounds for the lens alone) as well as an ADM rail that I use to mount the camera and stabilize the lens. camera body. itself, plus dew heaters at the end of the lens. One person can easily use this ball head with any ADM or Vixen style bar, allowing it to attach to any equatorial…