07-31-2016, 11:22 PM
Hi Guys,
Twenty odd years ago when at a marine flea market I chanced upon a very sturdy all aluminum tripod which I bartered down to 300 francs as it was in France at that time, that's 45 euros.
It's a StarD tripod made in the sixties in New York by a company formed by the Davidson Bros, eventually the company sold the manufacturing rights to none other than Leica, from there the rights were sold on to a Chinese co. who still make tripods today. In short it's a monster, solid and stable weighing in at 2.8Kgs with an extended height of 1.9 mts.
When the Nikor AFS 500mm F4 arrived it was time to put it to good use. First off I wanted a mono-pod, the StarD has a very solid column on which there's a pan and tilt style head, (ball heads are hopeless for a heavy telephoto). A bush to adapt the tripod leg to the column on my friends lathe with a locking screw and the job was done.
Meanwhile the ordered ball-head arrived which was going to serve for lighter lenses for use in astro shooting. I now needed a not too expensive gimbal head, the Beike Chinese unit that can be found everywhere on ebay is affordable, but is it any good?
I found this video review;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmvcui3m_a4
That convinced me, the guy had experience of high quality gimbal-heads and he liked it, I placed the order and it arrived a couple of days ago. Taking the unbranded unit out of the box, I examined it, it's a solid unit indeed. It doesn't of course have a fully ball-raced gimbaled arm and relies on plastic bushes, but does have a roller-raced flat bearing to help keep an even tension.
The unit uses the larger 3/8" whitworth thread and they also supply an reducer for 1/4" standard tripod thread. I tried the reducer, it just wouldn't screw on to my tripod, I tired one from another cheap arcastyle plate and that was the same....hopeless! Fortunatly I had ordered a pack of three reducers from the UK and finally mounted the Beike on my tripod. The result was OK ish, but there was some play on the arm when not locked and it hung at an angle under the weight of the lens and body unless locked tight with knob. I took the unit apart to see what was what; the problem is that the plastic bushes are too small in the arm pivot assembly, hence the play, why they didn't make them the right size I don't know? In short they needed packing slightly. Fortunately I had a stock of empty beer cans from the night before's "festivities" These cans are almost entirely aluminum and cut easily with a pair of scissors, two turns on the inside of the split plastic bushes and the play was gone. The only remaining problem was that the tensioning knob would now de-tension as the gimbal moved back and forth, some nylon string packing wound on the thread stopped the tensioning knob from undoing itself and all of a sudden that sloppy gimbal-head was smooth and responded nicely and evenly to tensioning.
Given it's price of 50 euros and the competitions price of at least five times that or even more, unless you're looking at serious every day pro use the Beike is a bargain, it's just as with a lot of the Chinese stuff, you have to fiddle and tweak to get it work! As for the reduction bushes???
To be continued with some images.....
https://www.flickr.com/photos/124690178@N08/
Twenty odd years ago when at a marine flea market I chanced upon a very sturdy all aluminum tripod which I bartered down to 300 francs as it was in France at that time, that's 45 euros.
It's a StarD tripod made in the sixties in New York by a company formed by the Davidson Bros, eventually the company sold the manufacturing rights to none other than Leica, from there the rights were sold on to a Chinese co. who still make tripods today. In short it's a monster, solid and stable weighing in at 2.8Kgs with an extended height of 1.9 mts.
When the Nikor AFS 500mm F4 arrived it was time to put it to good use. First off I wanted a mono-pod, the StarD has a very solid column on which there's a pan and tilt style head, (ball heads are hopeless for a heavy telephoto). A bush to adapt the tripod leg to the column on my friends lathe with a locking screw and the job was done.
Meanwhile the ordered ball-head arrived which was going to serve for lighter lenses for use in astro shooting. I now needed a not too expensive gimbal head, the Beike Chinese unit that can be found everywhere on ebay is affordable, but is it any good?
I found this video review;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmvcui3m_a4
That convinced me, the guy had experience of high quality gimbal-heads and he liked it, I placed the order and it arrived a couple of days ago. Taking the unbranded unit out of the box, I examined it, it's a solid unit indeed. It doesn't of course have a fully ball-raced gimbaled arm and relies on plastic bushes, but does have a roller-raced flat bearing to help keep an even tension.
The unit uses the larger 3/8" whitworth thread and they also supply an reducer for 1/4" standard tripod thread. I tried the reducer, it just wouldn't screw on to my tripod, I tired one from another cheap arcastyle plate and that was the same....hopeless! Fortunatly I had ordered a pack of three reducers from the UK and finally mounted the Beike on my tripod. The result was OK ish, but there was some play on the arm when not locked and it hung at an angle under the weight of the lens and body unless locked tight with knob. I took the unit apart to see what was what; the problem is that the plastic bushes are too small in the arm pivot assembly, hence the play, why they didn't make them the right size I don't know? In short they needed packing slightly. Fortunately I had a stock of empty beer cans from the night before's "festivities" These cans are almost entirely aluminum and cut easily with a pair of scissors, two turns on the inside of the split plastic bushes and the play was gone. The only remaining problem was that the tensioning knob would now de-tension as the gimbal moved back and forth, some nylon string packing wound on the thread stopped the tensioning knob from undoing itself and all of a sudden that sloppy gimbal-head was smooth and responded nicely and evenly to tensioning.
Given it's price of 50 euros and the competitions price of at least five times that or even more, unless you're looking at serious every day pro use the Beike is a bargain, it's just as with a lot of the Chinese stuff, you have to fiddle and tweak to get it work! As for the reduction bushes???
To be continued with some images.....
https://www.flickr.com/photos/124690178@N08/