I went ahead and ordered 4 of those really cheap mini cold shoe ball head adapters from ebay (4 for $13.52 with free shipping on ebay
). I posted a little while back about some affordable mini ball head options, but these guys are even cheaper at $3.38 a piece. It took 3 weeks for them to show up and I wasn’t expecting much, but i’ve been pleasantly surprised.
While these mini ball heads are cheap, they still feel solid enough to hold a field recorder or 5 inch monitor in place. One nice extra is that when you snug down the wing nut it locks the cold shoe as well as the ball head in place which means no need for glue. At this price, however, the thumb nut on the cold shoe is plastic as is the thumb nut on the ball head. Still for the price they feel reasonably usable.
I was expecting them to be complete junk and it turns out that’s not the case. I wouldn’t describe them as heavy duty, but they are more than strong enough to support a Zoom h1 or the Viltrox field monitor. The cold shoe at the bottom of the unit is even made out of poorly anodized metal and there’s a 1/4 20 female thread on the bottom of the unit for easy attachment.
These mini ball heads are very usable for the price. You might break them after a lot of use, but at $3.38 a piece you can afford a handful of them in your bag. They do take awhile to ship from China so you might want to order 5 or 6 of them to make it worth the wait.
Tags: 360 degree cold shoe, cold shoe swivel head, mini ball head
