Sirui K-30X Ballhead Review

You can buy the Sirui K-30X Ballhead on Amazon - http://amzn.to/2ChAour Read the full review of the K-30X ballhead by Sirui on LensVid.com: https://lensvid.com/gear/lensvid-exclusive-sirui-k-30x-ballhead-review/ Here is a short expert from the review: Today we continue our series of reviews of Sirui products and this time around we are going to take a look at the K-30X Ballhead. After we praised the Sirui T-2204X tripod in the last review (you can also read there a bit about the company), it is time to test one of the company's ballheads. Sirui has several lines of ballheads, the pro line of the company is called KX and it includes 4 different sized ballheads ranging from the small K-10X with a 33mm ball to the very large K-40X with a 54mm ball. We will be testing today the somewhat smaller K-30X which has a ball diameter of 44mm and a very respectable official carrying capacity of 30KG (or 66 pounds). Unlike the CB-38FT II by FLM which we reviewed here recently, the K-30X has a more traditional design with only two knobs - one for panning and one for locking the head and friction control. Let's take a closer look at the head: A Closer Look • The K-30X is very well made and feels like a quality product in the hand. • With a 44mm ball the K-30X also feels pretty substantial and putting it on a scale tips the balance at close to half a kilogram (or about 1.1 pounds) without the quick release plate. • The pan knob is a bit small with groves but no rubber coating and the pan movement itself is very smooth. You also have very clear angle markings with an arrow in the front. • The locking knob is large and rubberized and feels very nice in the hand. The actual movement of the ball is extremely smooth and you have a wide range of friction levels - from extremely loose to very tight - which is really great. • Talking about friction control - this is probably the biggest drawback of this head in our view. Sirui choose the traditional screw type friction control which you can find on many other ballheads. It is a bit better implemented than on some of the other heads we tested, but the system itself is inherently bad. You need to either use your fingernail or some flat screwdriver to choose the right level of friction and set it in using the secondary friction adjustment dial. As we noted in all of our head reviews - the system that we would really like to see here is a separate knob for friction and for some reason almost no manufacturer chooses to implement this simple design. • Another drawback we found is that from time to time especially with heavier loads we feel a slight drop in the head after locking it. This is something that we didn't feel with the FLM CB-38 for example (but to be fair the FLM does cost almost 3 times as much). Read the full text in the link above and don't forget to subscribe!