yeah BH-55 here.

Great unit overall.
But overpriced for what it does.

that is it works, and it's very well built, but I've had to adapt my method to get it to work the way I was expecting a high priced item would.

Quality: very high
Ease of use: nice to excellent
Physical properties: excellent
Ability: good
Value for Money: poor.(at current exchange rates). note that I got mine when the AuD was above $1.10, but now it's devalues massively.
Would I buy again, now .. no way(knowing what I know) would I buy again if the exchange rate was back as it was .. No!(knowing what I know now).

I'll explain my main issue with it.
First off, it is a good ballhead. If you want a low weight low profile head, yep! does the job.
if it's for landscapes and you throw the tripod and head into the back of the car as roughly and carelessly as you can .. it'll outlive most of us .. it feels solid as a rock.

The gripe is the way you need to operate it to get it to lock down.
If you use the obvious large dial to lock it down, it droops.
For 99.9% of landscapes(my main interest) .. that droop is insignificant.. a row of pixels that you wont/can't notice in a landscape shot. If you shoot 600+mm landscapes . you may notice the droop, but I'm confident it won't be an issue for you either(it's not for me).

The problem: macro. can't frame a macro with this head using the 'obvious' control knob to lock the head tight.
There is a small tension control dial/know thing. This allows you to set a tension. From fully floppy, to tenaciously tight.

That is the large knob can be set to flop the head with barely 1° of turn, or it the tension dial can be set so hard that you can't use the large dial to move the ball at all! Somewhere iin between is the best setting tho

So when you use the large dial as is obvious to do, the frame droop that's not worthy of mentioning in landscape usage, is a major issue when you do closer up framing. At the macro 1:1 level it's so annoying as to almost force you to sell the damned thing.

BUT! .. coming back to the small tension dial.
Knowing that it also controls ball tension, it made sense to try using this to 'lock' down the ball.
And it works,

So for macro or any closer up framing that is critical(eg. some architecture, or whatever) I need to use this small dial so that the framing doesn't move as I lock it down.
For landscapes I just use the large dial, as it's naturally is the one your hand will go for.

In terms of impressive presentation .. they get 10/10. It comes with a swish looking pouch a nice box some nice allen key .. and I'm thinking why? all crud. I've never used or seen those things in the 6 or 7 years I've had this thing now.
But it is durable. I've barely cleaned it, and I think if I did, it may work less well anyhow.

I did get the screw in plate type, as I was warned that the quick flip type can be problematic. Got used to it quickly tho .. I like them much better now.
It's hard to get my head around that the cheaper price means that you get no plate, and that the plate they have for it is $$$ too.
But like I said with the exchange rate as it was back then it came in at an ok price, and I thought I had a bargain!

So the only thing I can really complain about is that droop on lockdown. a high end product such as this shouldn't do that .. period!
This product has been hyped to high-heaven, and I fell for it.
But the 'workaround' was easy to figure out .. even tho there should have been no reason to have to figure that out to begin with.


I have plans soon to acquire another ballhead again.
When I say that tho I've procrastinated on this for about 3 years now!!
But my two main interests for this new purchase are:

Feisol CB-70D(by its specs appears to be massively large and heavy!)
and
FLM Centreball 58FTR

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ps. what tripod legs are you looking to put this on too?