Review: Manfrotto 504HD/ 546GBK Video Support System

This is Page Two of a two-page article. Previously: 504HD Video Pan / Tilt Head, 546B Tripod, Mid Level Spreader 537SPRB & 565 Boots, System Case.

Full System Operation

Having got the system out of its case and up to full height with the spreader fully retracted, it’s a very good size and feels exceedingly solid. The head is easy to level with very good access to the clamp knob.

Loading the camera & slide plate is a cinch with the wide mouth on the slot load guiding it straight to the target, though, if every head control has been set to zero, you will need to engage the tilt lock before doing so, as zero means exactly that, there is no resistance in anything.

Having got that far, issues started coming thick and fast. The 501PLONG plate, despite having a freely moving ¼” screw in the slide plate slot, only has a fixed VHS pin towards the front of the plate.

Engaging that pin when mounting my XL1s was not a problem, except that the slide plate was now well forward of the cameras COG. Loading it onto the head was fine, but sliding the camera and plate back to the furthest limit of it’s travel in the head slot allowed the front edge of the right hand glide rail on the slide plate to simply fall off the bottom of the slot plate into thin air for the last centimetre or two of its travel.

OK, so no VHS pin for the XL1s then.

Having relocated the slide plate on the camera and reloaded it on the head, it took all of 10 seconds to discover that the right SP rail falls into thin air for the last 2 cm of rearward travel, no matter how you configure it on the camera or head (what the?). Further investigation determines that the slide plate can actually be locked into position with this rail having fallen into the hole, thus twisting both it and the attached camera nearly two degrees off the horizontal.

One can imagine the workout of Anglo Saxon adjectives engendered in any (English speaking) videographer who shoots a couple of important hours of video in that configuration only to find the whole world on a slant! I cannot, for the life of me, figure how someone didn’t twig that removing so much metal from under the slide plate rail track just might create a problem, nor how the resultant problem wasn’t found in pre production testing. Amazing.

Moving swiftly on, you’ll need to set some tilt drag to balance the camera otherwise things can go very bad very quickly with no resistance settings at all. Having established what you perceive to be the balance point, you can then proceed to play “juggle the controls” to get some counterbalance working, upping the CB knob whilst backing off the tilt drag.

Next I discovered that the CB level appears to be maddeningly inconsistent between forward and rearward tilts, making the balance point appear to move despite the camera being locked off. Much shuffling of camera on head ensued. Having finally got to CB setting #2, I could reduce the tilt drag to zero and push the camera both forward and backward and let go without anything coming into contact with the tripod legs, though counterbalanced it certainly wasn’t.

At this point you realise the compromise that this three-stage CB system forces on you. The only way to get the camera to hold at a set position from this point is to start dialling tilt drag back in till such time as it will, actually, hold. It took tilt drag setting #8 and yet another camera shuffle on the head to get the system to hold perfectly wherever I put it. Now, whilst I would most probably dial that level of drag in on a very, very long zoom, I would never do so on a wide shot. That option is not open on this head.

If you do successfully manage to get the head / camera / CB system to the happy state that it will hold, it would be wise to put something like a whiteout line or similar on the slide plate side to mark where the slide plate protrudes from either the front or rear of the head plate, as you DO NOT want to repeat the above rigmarole too often.

I soon discovered just how tiring using the head with such a high amount of drag was, and eventually give up and dial it down and simply accept the camera must be controlled for the full duration of each and every shot. That was almost as tiring as shooting with tilt drag at #8, being used to the effortless control with the Vision 3AS, Vision Blue and Libec.

Spreader at minimum and maximum extensions.

Shooting at #8, did however, give a couple of things away. At such a high drag setting even the pretty hefty 546 sticks could be tempted to misbehave, so my left hand stayed pretty well planted around the top of a leg all the time I was tilting.

After a bit of use I suddenly twigged that every time I did a pan, no matter what pan drag was applied, I could feel vibration in the leg top I was holding. Cutting to the chase, the pan bearings produce so much vibration it can be felt anywhere on the tripod, though, interestingly, it doesn’t appear to find it’s way into the head/ camera.

Having discovered this, a quick test of the tilt bearings showed they aren’t exactly silent either. Extraordinary! I’ve never heard or felt anything like it from a video head, ever. This could, quite possibly, be just a faulty head, though both bearings being noisy in a brand new, ready for sale, head sounds a bit implausible.

The second thing it threw up was an inherent problem with the “Bridge” design and Manfrotto’s seemingly rather cavalier attitude to head plate integrity. With a separate bearing on either side of the “Bridge” and the only physical link between the two being the head plate (which has an inordinate amount of fresh air where there should be head plate), with the pan bar on the right side and the tilt drag on the left side, at high levels of tilt drag a distinct amount of head warp can be seen as the right side lifts/ falls and the left side lags behind.

Relocate the pan bar to the left side and voila, head warp is gone, although, having said that, with the counterbalance cranked up to maximum, it’s quite conceivable it would be back again

Moving on, a bit of “run ‘n gun” shooting threw up yet another “gotcha” with the mid level spreader. With the concentric extend locks loosened for any reason; it is possible for the inner extend tube to rotate in the outer shaft by about 10 or 15 degrees about the horizontal / vertical (depending on what you are looking at), in either direction. If the extend locks are re–engaged with a tube rotated thus, it throws that extend arm completely out of whack and it develops something of a mind of its own, throwing the entire spreader off line during closure.

With all three in this condition the spreader gets cranky indeed. This is the second support system in a row (the Libec RS 250 being the other) where I think the designers need to go back to the drawing board on the spreader.

Summing Up

It’s a great set of sticks let down by a badly thought out mid level spreader. The 546B’s are probably the second best set of 2:2:1 sticks I’ve ever used, after the Vinten Pozi–Loc’s. If your shooting style doesn’t require extending this spreader much, if at all, or allows the use of a ground level spreader, then it’s definitely recommended for the price.

The 504 HD head… good bits:

• The infinitely variable drag systems work well, even if the pan drag is tricky at high levels.
• OFF really means OFF with every control. It may be possible to configure this head with one of the new, ultra compact HD video enabled SLR cameras.
• The slot load is easy.
• Variable position lock levers save a lot of hassle but fixed 90º ones would be even better.

Not so good bits:

• No sliding VHS pin.
• No continuously variable counterbalance.
• Compromised head plate integrity.
• Noisy bearings.

Overall impression? Looks ain’t everything, that’s for sure. It is, of course, cheap, at $379, only $20 more expensive than the previous 503 HDV head, compared to $633 for the Libec and $697 for the Vinten heads, so expecting rocket science is probably asking too much.

Conclusion

The pretty awful head is saved somewhat by a very good set of sticks, notwithstanding the cranky spreader. Unfortunately there’s no real getting around the counterbalance system and head plate issues.

Facts and Figures

You can find everything you need or want to know in the central F&F section here:

[Note: the Facts and Figures section is forthcoming in yet another DVi article to be linked here.]

Questions? This, and my other reviews, assumes the reader has a reasonable working knowledge of modern camera support equipment. As I am aware that in some cases that will not be true, there will undoubtedly be questions arising from something I have not explained as clearly as I could have. The beauty of hosting these reviews on DVinfo is that the writer and many other experienced shooters can be found, asked questions of and interacted with live, by simply diving into the appropriate Forums.

For a direct line to me, dive in here: DV Info Net Forum: Support Your Local Camera, or Send me an e–mail, just click on my name in any post there and fire away. You do need to be a member to interact by the way, but heck, it’s free!

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following for making this review possible: Tim Timlin at PanaVision in Auckland, New Zealand for his valued cooperation and the supply of the Manfrotto system under review. Chris Hurd and the team at DV Info Net for getting it up there and all the background work involved in doing so. My esteemed spouse, who wishes to remain anonymous, for proofing, formatting and generally ensuring this review didn’t look like it was just thrown together.