I tried 5 heads and settled on this one. 1st use was using an ARCA B1 ball head that I already had. I worked OK but with the CG higher than the ball joint if you don't watch out the gun can be canted. They I switched to a cheap gimbal head. Once setup level, the gun shouldn't get canted and can be balanced to be weightless during movements, nice. The problem is that all low cost gimbals have play in the joints that cause about a 1 to 3 degrees of cant. You can adjust that out with a leveling base or legs, but that will only work for a limited range of panning. I ordered 3 more heads from Amazon to try out and decided on this pan and tilt head. The pivot joints work well, having no or with friction without any play in the joints.
Pros not tilting with any movements at a "reasonable" cost and much smaller and lighter than any gimbal that will do a good job. Also you can lean into the gun's buttpad to reduce movement from recoil (not and air gun issue). You can't put a lot of pressure on the buttpad with a gimbal because it will move the pivot more than a pan and tilt head. Con's the gun cannot be balanced to be weightless so you have to use some clamping fiction for the tilt movement. I also tried better gimbals in the 150 to $200 range and they all have play in the joints tilting the gun. There is a cheaper dual armed gimbal that shouldn't have any tilting because of it's symmetrical arms, but I decided to return in transit because it is larger and heavier and I'm sure the joints are just a bad.
This one still tilted about 2 degrees.
This one should be OK but I'm guess still poor pivots.
