What tripod do you use and aren't many identical?

Jack Dale wrote:

The seller didn't even mention a ballhead at all, but that second pic looked like there is one, with the legs folded over the head. Baibian's website also mentioned a ballhead coming with this BD-284 tripod, an MD-28, so I bought it.

Here it is:

The Baibian website: http://www.baibian.tw/

The Baibian BD-284 tripod, pictured here the carbon version: http://www.baibian.tw/BD-Series.html

The BD-28 ballhead: http://www.baibian.tw/Ballhead-md28.html

Baibian's nicest looking ballhead, the 45A: http://www.baibian.tw/Ballhead-45A.html

I wish I knew who imports/sells Baibian products here in Europe, and under what brand name!

Liewenberger

With the button release and the lack of safety screw grooves, that looks like a Sirui style ballhead. They are not fully compatible with Arca Swiss plates. I could not fit a Sirui tilt head clamp to the vertical plate on my L bracket.

Yes, the Sirui heads indeed look very much like this one. The only difference seem to be these stupid black rubber rings on the knobs of most of the Sirui heads; I could imagine it feels nice, but I don't think these rings will live forever.

Not fully compatible with Arca Swiss, you're probably correct, but I've never done any tests. So far  I have used this head exactly once, with the plate that came with it, on last New Year's Eve. Thought about shooting some fireworks from the veranda, looking down to a little village in the valley. Had nicely set up the Rollei tripod with this Baibian head and my old E-5 with the RM-CB1 cable release, but then around 10 p.m. the valley filled up with fog and that was it.

The lack of safety screw grooves - yes; though I think this has changed now with newer models. I bought this one in late 2017 or early 2018. The seller said it came from some photoshop gone bancrupt, so around the time I've bought it, it was probably not the latest model of this head.

Liewenberger