Amateur Photographer verdict
The Benro FS20PRO hybrid head isn’t quite as good as either dedicated ball-and-socket or pan-and-tilt tripod heads. But if you want one head for both photo and video, it does a surprisingly good job.- Versatile hybrid ball/pan & tilt design
- Compact size
- Slower to use than a simple ball head
- Not as smooth as a dedicated video head
Aside from a few specialist options, most tripod heads fall into one of two camps. Ball-and-socket heads are popular for photography due to their speed and ease of use, while pan-and-tilt heads are preferred for video. But the Benro FS20PRO Hybrid Head aims to give the best of both worlds, by combining the two types.
Benro FS20PRO at a glance:
- $85 / £100
- Hybrid ball & socket / pan & tilt head
- Dual panning (clamp and base)
- Arca-Swiss camera clamp
- 8.2 x 7.8 x 5cm; 310g
- 4.5kg rated load
- uk.benroeu.com
To understand how the FS20PRO works, let’s look at the head’s construction. At the bottom, there’s a conventional panning base with its own lock. Next is an inverted ball-and-socket joint, with a tilt mechanism built on top of it. Last but not least, the camera clamp has its own panning mechanism. The tilt lock is placed on the left side of the head, with the ball lock on the right.
A short pan handle is included, which can be mounted on either side, or removed entirely when you’re working in ball-head mode. It has a magnetic slot for a hex key, which can be used either to remove and reposition the handle, or to tighten the supplied camera plate.
With its metallic blue finish, the Benro FS20PRO is designed to match the firm’s lightweight Cyanbird tripods. As well being available standalone, it comes in a kit with a carbon-fibre version of the tripod for $280 / £315.
Benro FS20PRO key features:
- Markings: The panning base, rotating camera clamp and tilt mechanism are all marked at 5° increments
- Levels: Bubble levels on the ball joint and camera clamp help with setting your camera straight and level
- Arca-Swiss: The camera clamp will accept any standard 38mm dovetail camera plate or L-bracket
- Tripod fixing: A standard 3/8in thread on the 35mm diameter base enables attachment to tripods
Benro FS20PRO product image gallery
In use:
On paper, the Benro FS20PRO’s design has a lot going for it. Lock down the ball, and videographers can use it as a pan-and-tilt head. Lock down the tilt, and you have a ball-and-socket head. What’s more, the rotating clamp can equally happily hold cameras with L-brackets, or telephoto lenses with tripod feet, simply by spinning it through 90°.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how well the head works in practice. It’s surprisingly sturdy, given its relatively small size, and capable of holding a sizeable load. I tested it with a Sony A7R V and Sigma 100-400mm lens together weighing 2kg, and I was impressed to find that it held this just fine, locking down with minimal shift in composition.
All those controls do make it slightly complicated to use, though, so you should spend an hour or two familiarising yourself with how best to use it. Most obviously, it’s easy to mix up the ball and tilt locks, and it’s a shame they don’t have more distinct designs. It’s also possible for the camera platform pan-lock lever to clash with the ball or tilt lock controls – although it’s usually not hard to resolve this.
Pan-and-tilt head for video
For video, you first need to align the ball using the bubble level on its top, and then lock it down. This requires tilting the camera platform 90 degrees to see the level, then setting it back again. Both the pan and tilt movements are fairly smooth, but not quite as nice as dedicated pan/tilt heads I’ve used recently on tripods from Vanguard and Sirui. Unsurprisingly given the size and price, there’s no real adjustment for drag.
One neat feature is that you can, at a pinch, use the ball head like a levelling bowl, and attach the handle to the camera clamp for panning. However, this is nowhere near as smooth as using the base for panning.
Ball-and-socket head for photography
If you’re not shooting video, you can in principle switch the Benro FS20PRO to ball-and-socket mode for quicker setup. Here you get a degree of friction control, by progressively releasing the ball lock. This makes it easier to reposition camera/lens combinations of different weights, without having to completely loosen the ball joint and risk your camera flopping around.
Perhaps the head’s biggest weakness, though, is that the range of camera movement is pretty limited in this mode. There’s a single slot for dropping the camera into portrait format, but outside of that, tilt angles are rather small. But you can get around this, to a degree, using the tilt and camera-clamp panning mechanisms.
There are two ways of looking at this. On the one hand, it’s slower and less convenient than setting up a conventional ball head. However, some photographers might appreciate having those single-axis adjustments available to fine-tune composition.
Benro FS20PRO: Our Verdict
To be honest, I wasn’t expecting that much from the Benro FS20PRO, given its small size, complexity, and relatively affordable price. But it’s better than it has any right to be. It does bring some compromises, of course; it’s neither as quick to use as ball head, nor as smooth as a proper video head. But if you just want one small, lightweight head for both photo and video, it does the job surprisingly well. If you have the original hybrid Cyanbird tripod with the somewhat basic N00P ball-head, it might make a nice upgrade.
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