Geared Heads

These are 'geared heads', an adjusting via gears that i only learned about about 18 months ago.

Made by Manfrotto, a company i've never thought made very good products, these turn out to be quite good. When shooting macro items having to adjust the camera's placement by moving the tripod causes all kinds of necessary adjustments. I bought the smaller, on the right, geared head without doing much research to discovered the camera and rails i was using was too heavy for the head and when tilted downwards tended to literally fall forward, ie the gears didn't hold the tilt. Then i discovered they made different models for different weights and today i received the model that will, i hope, handle the weight of the camera, rails, lights, etc.. I was lucky and located a used one that was about 25% less then a new one. Over the next weeks i'll learn if i have finally bought the one that will work.