Manfrotto MVH502A Fluid Head - Long-Term Review with Video

MVH502A with built-in 75mm ball head

Manfrotto's MVH502A and its flat-bottom cousin, the MVH502AH, are amongst Manfrotto's latest fluid tripod head designs. The model is no longer new, having been released earlier this year (2013), but I thought that it would be best to review them only after experiencing their reliability in the field over the past 7 months.

While it is true that Manfrotto's prosumer fluid heads are generally very much on par with their professional broadcast cousins - given their relative affordability to Sachtlers and Vintens - the MVH502A/AH are not a part of this high point of professional quality.

To begin with, it is amongst the first of their Pro series of tripod heads to bear the dubious distinction of a "MADE IN CHINA" label - hidden under the body where nobody will find it unless they're looking for it:

Now, contrary to what is popular to espouse when you are a blogger on his or her high horse, I have no problem with Chinese quality, when said quality is at a proper level (as for the labor situation, you can take that to a political or human-rights blog).
Contrary to popular belief that all Chinese-made anything is garbage, such is not the case - the quality is up to the brand that designs the product and the price point they demand from the Chinese manufacturer. Case in point, Fotga's 15mm rail systems are a perfect example of quality from China, just as most of the off-brands are a perfect example of the opposite.

But I digress. The fact of the matter is that Manfrotto designed and approved a substandard product to be manufactured by their subcontractors in China. This is an excellent summation of the few glaring issues that prevent this otherwise good design from being just that - good.

In the interest of fairness, the design does have the following high points:

• Adjusting the tilt lock is very easy and quick. A very careful hand may be able to open it from a closed position when shooting and get away with it - if your lens has IS. This can save a take.
• The control arm has virtually no give in it. The grip is also a nice piece, though it slides a bit.
• Yes, it holds the weight of the 5D Mark II, and just about any other DSLR you throw at it. Even a 5D with an Anton Bauer battery pack will be supported, as will a JVC GY-HD110 - also with an Anton-Bauer battery pack.
• For all of the faults, both of my MVH502A's have survived harsh field treatment (even though one tripod did not) without developing any issues (no added slop, no stripped threads, etc.) - no more than when they were brand-new, anyway.
• Very few other brands exist that produce an equivalent product at an equivalent price, short of used Manfrottos.

With that said, here are the negatives (not all of them - read on):

• Adjusting the panning lock is the opposite - in terms of ease - to that of the tilt lock. Getting your fingers between the tripod head in front and under the unit is an ergonomic frustration. Don't expect to do so in the middle of a candid take - IS or otherwise.
• The following problem only affects users with external batteries or shoulder supports that hang from the back of their 15mm rail systems: You won't be able to see the level indicator.
• And the big one: Every single one of these MVH502's have about 0.5mm of unobstructed play at the ball when the pan head's resistance is at a minimum. This applies to both the 75mm A model, and the AH. This is unacceptable. Not even my simple (and by comparison, tiny) 701HDV ever had the slightest of play.

 
My very first MVH502A (quickly substituted with another) was also plagued by uneven drag in the panning function - panning in one direction was dampened far more than if the head were spun in the other, depending on the amount of resistance dialed into the head. Even heads operating properly seem to contain minute, uneven drag depending on the direction of one's panning; possibly due to some friction with the drag adjustment mechanism itself.

Nevertheless, the 0.5mm of play in the ball head remained unacceptable. I contacted Manfrotto about this problem, at which point, they sent me a second MVH502A. If nothing else, this was a very courteous gesture to which I greatly appreciate - but the replacement was no better.

Since then, I found multiple flat-head MVH502AH's in local stores, all of which with the same issue - so I had to conclude that this flaw affects all MVH502's.

Luckily, I generally dial in a generous amount of resistance in my work, so this problem has yet to be a field issue for me. Nevertheless, this will not always be the case for all shoots.


The other significant complaint I have is with the tripod plate on these units. The deep, black satin finish characteristic of Manfrotto's earlier tripod plates has been replaced with an interpretation of this same finish by their Chinese manufacturer; a beadblasted, flat black finish.

This finish is reproduced in grey on the top of the tripod head, and the combination of the plate and head results in the most friction-prone plate insertions I've ever had to work with. At times, I've had to struggle for 30 seconds just to get my 5D out - and the location of the release button doesn't help.

Now that the finish and high spots have worn smooth after hundreds of cycles, I've had fewer problems with it, but it still does not come close to the smoothness of earlier Manfrottos.

I also had one case where the release button return spring jammed in its housing, which required disassembly of the top half of the unit with allen keys - with the camera still mounted on top - just to get the camera off of it. Luckily, this happened early on and only once, and I've put both heads through much abuse since with no further issues.

Admittedly, my MVH502A's have worked for me in conditions ranging from quiet art galleries to dusty construction sites - though the perfectionist in me is far from satisfied. Whether the flaws of the MVH502 are of equal concern to your purchase of one is completely your call - the above is simply a guide as to what you should expect.

-Kurt
"Man with the 5D"

No monetary compensation was provided for the mention of any of the above products. One MVH502A head was provided to me as a courtesy by Manfrotto, following my complaints.

Choosing follow focus gear rings

Canon 5D Mark II w/Fotga DP500 II follow focus and generic 60-70mm fixed diameter ring

The cinemazation of DSLR cameras have created a need to add 0.8 pitch follow focus gears to standard photography lenses. Many such gears exist on the market; however, not all are created equal - a fact that is not immediately apparent until you've already experimented with a few.

The prevalent types of follow focus gears available to the prosumer cinematrographer today come in three different variants:

• Left: Plastic, adjustable diameter gear ring with friction lock and lever
• Center: Rubberized, adjustable diameter gear ring with tooth lock
• Right: Fixed outside-diameter ring w/10mm variable inner gear ring diameter (various sizes available), made by Cinematics and others

I've used all three in the field - following are my thoughts on each:

Semi-hard plastic, adjustable gear ring with lever

The adjustable plastic gear ring is my least favorite in that the toothed reverse of the plastic isn't that grippy. I've yet to have it slip, but it does not inspire confidence. Likewise, the lever locking mechanism of the lever is cheap, damages the gear teeth, and the lever gets in the way of follow focus units unless oriented to the opposite side of the rig.

On the other hand, the plastic gear teeth engage well with follow focus units, and it is especially handy when using an older, manual telephoto prime for focus control.

 

Rubberized adjustable gear ring

The rubberized gear rings can are soft enough to grip a lens - and grip well - but this also causes the teeth to flex while meshing. The toothed receiver also works well to keep the ring tight.

Unfortunately, coupled with small-diameter lenses and a follow focus mounted in certain places, these rings will jump teeth - and visibly so on screen. Nevertheless, they are effective on larger-diameter lens barrels.

Cinematics 80-90mm at left, generic 60-70mm at left

These fixed-diameter rings are my personal favorites, having the ability to reach a follow focus unit with ease, regardless of lens barrel diameter. This style of gear ring is presently available as a generic (only one at present, it seems) and by Cinematics with slight differences between each. Both companies produce inner diameters ranging from 60-70mm up to 108-116mm. In my experience, the generics have enough adjustment to fit barrels down to 57mm comfortably; possibly smaller.

The generic's plastic-knob bolt is durable, despite its cheap appearance.

Cinematics' units have a smoother finish than the generics and have an allen head bolt with a proper steel nut, but otherwise show no superiority over the generics in operation or durability. Unlike the generics, they are available in red and blue (I've also seen purple) as well, which is fine if you're a hipster who must color-coordinate your camera rig to your fixed-gear bicycle and Macbook. Personally, I see no point to it - why call more attention to an L-series lens by putting red gear rings on it?

Additionally, a pair of these rings can provide both focus control and a precise zoom control for lenses with fixed zoom rings - such as Canon's L-series. Given the lack of perfect video-quality fluidity in even the L-series lenses - not to mention the fact that most photography lenses are varifocal - controlling zoom through a second gear ring and follow focus unit can be a stress-free method of ensuring a perfect take on the first try.

-Kurt "Man with the 5D"

No monetary compensation was provided for the mention of the any of the products mentioned or shown in this article.

CMOS Rolling Shutter Removal - Plugin Shootout!

I'm getting away with whip pans like these.

Or just about, anyway.

That said, I'm not going to bore you with an explanation of what rolling shutter is. Chances are that - before you reached this blog - you already went through the torture of a few hundred posts and videos of everyone else demonstrating rolling shutter - without the slightest suggestion of a good CMOS skew and jello removal tool.

You can relax now, for I'm going to show you a comparison between the five filters that are available for doing just that, and the most professional one of the lot.

Better yet, the best one isn't even the most expensive.

Following is our list of candidates:

1. The DeShaker plugin for VirtualDub:
• Free; requires that you convert your footage to AVI before importing. 
2. Adobe's After Effects' Warp Stabilizer, available since CS5.5:
• Requires purchase of one of the Adobe suites. Not necessarily cheap.
• Note: CS6 is equipped with a dedicated rolling shutter corrector, but I did not have time to download CS6 to try it.
3. ProDAD's Mercalli PRO Version 2
• $249 from the ProDAD website
• Sony Vegas - since version 10 - contains a simplified version of Mercalli; we'll cover only the standalone.
4. New Blue FX's Video Essentials III plugin, which contains a rolling shutter removal tool.
• Works with Adobe After Effects, AVID Media Composer, and Sony Vegas, amongst others. $130, plus the cost of your editor.
5. The Foundry's Rollingshutter plugin for Nuke and After Effects
• A cool $500.

Do note that I'm taking this from the point of view of PC's, though MAC users have a rolling shutter removal tool in Apple's Final Cut 10, and the Foundry's plugin is also MAC compatible.

Seeing as there is no better way to see the results than a video, I prepared three rolling shutter examples and ran them through each of the five filters:

 

Though not covered in the video, program usability presents a concern as well; after all, a timely workflow is essential to smooth editing.

Conclusions:

• DeShaker is an absolute nightmare to use. Besides having to convert footage to AVI (I used Pazera MOV to AVI to do so - it was quicker than Adobe Media Encoder) before even importing it, setting the plugin up in VirtualDub is a hassle, and it takes ages to analyze the footage. You'll wind up with some pretty big AVI files to clean off your drive too unless you install and compress with the x264vfw plugin.
• Warp Stabilizer, along with the New Blue FX and Foundry plugins run the same as most other effect plugins for After Effects. New Blue FX had a tendency of crashing AE at times, while The Foundry's plugin can become a long and drawn-out process.
• Mercalli is ridiculously fast, and arguably the most user intuitive. It almost looks too simplistic and mainstream to be a professional tool, but - as proven by the footage tests - it is superior to everything else as a general-purpose tool. 
• At best, the only further improvement would be to correct individual extreme skew issues with New Blue FX before importing into Mercalli. With certain footage, this workflow could remove rolling shutter skew entirely.

One last option remains for CMOS skew removal (exclusively - this method will not correct for jello/jitter), if you do not mind a bit of DIY: Layer seven or eight feathered copies of the problematic footage over each other, with each successive clip (from top to bottom) playing progressively slower than the first - thereby correcting for the top-to-bottom scan delay in most CMOS sensors.

Mike Huetz on Vimeo has a brilliant video tutorial of this method: http://vimeo.com/10130633

Regardless, a powerful filter does not negate that one can ignore CMOS rolling shutter when shooting, expecting that you can fix everything in post. That's not a reasonable though - you simply cannot walk into a shoot and expect to get away with it.

If absolute perfection is what you need, the Black Magic Production Camera 4K - with global shutter - should be your next purchase, rather than a rolling shutter corrector.

In fact, I fully intend to become the Man with the BMPC 4K someday, but that's the future.

Where did I leave my DeLorean?

No monetary compensation was provided for the mention of any of the products listed. All were tested during product trial periods or were purchased by myself.