Equipment review: Arca-Swiss Core 75 Leveler Geared Tripod Head

A few years ago, while leading a photo tour in Patagonia with Justin Black, we had a participant that was working with a 150 MP Phase One digital back on an Alpa Camera using large format lenses. That photographer, David Chew, is incredibly talented and showed us every day his incredible skill creating amazing landscape images. Along with his incredible high-end camera set up he also had along with him two tripods and two different tripod heads. It isn’t often that I see new, high-end gear that I am not aware of, but on this trip David had a few things I had never seen before. One of those was the Arca-Swiss Core 75 Leveler Geared tripod head and the other was the Arca-Swiss Quick Link system. I reviewed the Quick link system in my last blog post detailing various tripod systems and when I use them.

Over the course of that phot tour, David and I hung out quite a bit and it was very interesting to watch how he chose which tripod and tripod head to take on each outing. He had with him the amazing Arca-Swiss Cube as well as the smaller Arca-Swiss Core 75 Leveler, both of which I had never seen. The Cube is a great tripod head but it is massive and something I wasn’t ever going to be interested in since I often have to hike a long ways with a tripod. The Core 75 was a different story. David was aware of my interest in the Core 75 and let me borrow it on a few outings. As a ball head aficionado, I found the Core 75 to be a slower, much more methodical tripod head but I also saw that it was incredibly precise and allowed me to dial in the landscape compositions in an exacting manner I had not experienced before. David graciously offered to let me keep using his tripod setup on other occasions but I declined because I was worried I would get a little too attached to that stellar setup.

In the last few months, while using my older tripods I kept thinking about how smooth and efficient that experience was with David’s gear back in Patagonia. The seed was planted and it took a while for me to pull the trigger but here we are. I recently purchased the Really Right Stuff (RRS) TVC-24L tripod and the Arca-Swiss Core 75 Leveler Geared tripod head in an effort to level up my tripod game. As someone who has mostly used ball heads for decades now, I am very familiar with the troublesome scenario where you think you have the perfect composition, then you lock down the ball head and it settles ever so slightly to a different position that may or may not be level or exactly what you wanted. In my experience, the better (and more expensive) the ball head the less settling there is, but even with the best ball heads they can shift ever so slightly and if you are really trying to dial in a composition this can drive you nuts. Hence, the need for some thing like the Arca-Swiss Core 75 leveler tripod head.

I seem to be at that point where the usefulness of a tripod head like this really comes in handy–especially when photographing landscapes. Now that I have had this tripod head for a little while, I have found it a bit faster to use than I previously thought. It is just a matter of getting used to the controls so that they become second nature. The Arca-Swiss craftsmanship I do have to say is remarkable. This tripod head seems to be carved out of a block of steel. Even so, this geared head has a lot more moving parts than your typical ball head (like the RRS BH-55 shown below next to the Arca-Swiss Core 75) so if the weather is going to be really bad, I usually will take a ball head that can deal with sand, rain and snow a bit better — and not need a cleaning afterwards.

I opted for the screw knob lock on top of the tripod head for tightening down the camera mounting plates–most of mine are RRS camera plates so not the standard Arca-Swiss camera plates but very similar. The screw knob lock allows for a little more adjustment depending on whether you are using Arca-Swiss plates on your cameras or another brand, like the Really Right Stuff plates I typically use. At some point in the future I might change this top mounting plate out for a RRS flip-lock attachment. Time will tell if I can get along with the one already built into the top of the tripod head. So far it has been very easy to use.

As can be seen above and in all of the images of the Core 75 Leveler, I have the tripod head attached to the tripod with the Arca-Swiss Quick Link system (shown below). This system allows for easily changing out the tripod head without having to pull out the Allen wrenches every time. To change out the tripod head you simply rotate the locking collar on the Quick Link base and the tripod head will pull straight up so that another head can be inserted and locked down. This makes for a very nice system to travel with one tripod and multiple tripod heads if needed. It also allows for hiking with just the tripod legs (without a tripod head attached) and then attaching the tripod head at the location when you set everything up.

I realize that everything Arca-Swiss makes carries a hefty price tag. They are after all a Swiss brand and anyone who has traveled to Switzerland knows nothing in Switzerland is cheap. As is usually the case, you get what you pay for. In this case, Arca-Swiss has a sterling reputation and the level of build quality in their products comes at a price. The Core 75 Leveler sells for $725 USD, which makes it by far the most expensive tripod head that I own. I own a few $500 ball heads (some that I have had for decades) so this is just the next step up in price. What I have learned over the years is that tripods and tripod heads pretty much last forever if taken care of. Aside from the horrible first few shaky and cheap tripods I purchased at the very start of my career, I still have and use all of the high-end tripods and tripod heads that I have ever purchased. I am certain this Arca-Swiss head will outlast them all.

In use, the Core 75 Leveler can rotate 15-degrees side to side and up and down. While this may sound quite limiting, it is easy enough to lower one of the tripod legs to extend that range. The tripod head can also be mounted onto a ball head to massively extend the movement range–as with genres like macro photography. For my work, I don’t see the need to attach it to a ball head. On the head itself, there are two different tubular bubble levels that can help to level the tripod head. I tend to use the levels on the camera itself as they are easier to dial in and possibly more accurate as well. The Core 75 Leveler can also handle up to 66 pounds (30 Kg), which makes it the most robust tripod head that I have. By comparison, my venerable RRS BH-55 (shown above) can only handle 50 pounds (22.7 Kg) according to RRS.

The Core 75 Leveler also has a dual panning feature where you can pan the base at the bottom of the tripod head and also pan from the top of the tripod head. This top panning mechanism allows for very precisely creating panoramas once the camera is leveled. Of course for the best panorama images you will probably want to attach a nodal slider so that you can put the nodal center of the lens right on the panning axis. With my FUJIFILM GFX cameras and their 102 megapixel sensors I often create panorama images from a single frame by cropping the panorama from the full frame image. Especially now that we have the Super Resolution feature in Lightroom where we can upres images by a factor of four this works incredibly well and gives me a final file size in the range of 240 MP to 280 MP once the image is cropped to the panorama format.

As can be seen above, the Core 75 Leveler is also limited in that it cannot rotate the camera 90 degrees to the vertical position. Because of that, you have to have an L-bracket attached to the camera (as shown above with my FUJIFILM GFX 100 II). This is a small thing but just something to consider if you don’t have L-Brackets for all of your cameras. L-Brackets are not something I have on my cameras all the time as they can add a lot of extra bulk and weight, but for landscape photography they are very nice to have.

All in all, if you need or want a geared tripod head and want one that is fairly light then the Arca-Swiss Core 75 Leveler is an excellent option. It is significantly less expensive than the Arca-Swiss Cube or the D4 that they make, both of which are over $1,000 USD. Arca-Swiss also make a smaller version of the Core 75, which is the Core 60 Leveler. The Core 60 Leveler is quite a bit smaller and lighter but only has 10-degrees of tilt. I figured that the extra 5 degrees of tilt that the Core 75 offers would make it more versatile and it is still quite small and light, especially compared to my heavy-duty ball heads. The Arca-Swiss D4 is another excellent option as well but it was bigger and heavier than I wanted to deal with. Of course, there are also many other brands that make similar style heads but once you work with an Arca-Swiss head there is no going back. They are works of art. For more information on the Core 75 Leveler and the Quick Link system visit the Arca-Swiss website.