Better tripod head or better tripod with new combined head?

[ethan]

Much to my annoyance and quite by accident I joined a bunch of Twitchers on the moors in the Highlands to photograph some rare Gull only to find the head on my tripod would not keep perfectly still using the XT2 with battery grip combined with the 100-400 and 1.4 convertor.

Current tripod is "Three Legged Thing" Punk, or something like that. I noticed Wex have a deal with a Manfrotto 190 combined with three way head, with a maximum load of 4000 grams. I was wondering whether it was worth a shot? The combined weight of the XT2, grip,lens & adapter is 2.245 kg

Edit: Just rang and spoke to them and they said it would be fine, so I'll give it a go. They'll do a 30 day return.

 

[ethan]

I'll look in to getting a Gimble for future use. Maybe try a cheap one like this to begin with: https://youtu.be/vmvcui3m_a4

In the meantime I think I will look towards using the Manfrotto for convenience or as a spare if it performs adequately. Thanks for the advice.

regarding the Three legged Thing, I caught the fleshy bit between my thumb and finger a number of times. I drew blood on one occasion in front of a group of people watching me photograph a cascading stream over and through some rocks. Also bare handling that tripod in Winter is a definate no, no as it starts to stick to flesh at minus 10 and above

 

[ethan]

Out of curiosity Ethan did you try handheld?

Yeah Zaf. Tripod was that bad You couldn't tell the difference between the two at that distance. I'd focus the lens on the bird and then all of a sudden the lens would slowly glide to the right or upwards. I think it was the ball-head. It couldn't handle the 100-400 with 1.4 adapter in extremely windy conditions. I'm going to get a Gimble for the manfrotto 190XP I just bought.