This is a companion post for my Youtube video titled, “Ulanzi / Falcam F38 Reliability Issue“.
I am going to go into detail about what I found is wrong first, then go into my current solution for the problem. The problem is simple actually, it is with the reliance on just a locking pin on most F38 base-plates or clamps.
The F38 camera plate is designed to push against a spring-loaded locking pin that gets pushed aside and down as the plate is inserted.
After the camera plate is pushed completely into place, the spring-loaded locking pin springs back up to prevent the F38 from sliding out or coming loose.
In theory, this works well and it worked well for a while… that is until a bit of wear sets in like what I experienced on my F22/F38 half-cage for the A7 IV.
It is loose now, this might look as if its a small thing but this play makes the F38 system unreliable especially when mounted on a tripod for photography and even worse for video on tripod or gimbal.
This play has resulted in too many of my shots becoming unusable due to strange jerks in videos before I found out this was the problem. It has also made quite a few of my tripod mounted photos unusable.
The issue of course doesn’t appear on new camera plates or cages that haven’t worn as much like most of my camera plates as well as my Sony A7C F38 / F22 cage.
Right now, as far as I know, every single F38 base-plate or clamp will be susceptible to this issue except 1 and a half (because its a “maybe”).
F38 Neck-Strap Base-Plate
The first of this so-called the neck strap or camera strap plate. This base-plate doesn’t depend at all on a locking pin to keep the quick-release plate in place and instead uses a wide piece of plastic.
On thing of note however, it might not matter as this neck-strap or camera-strap plate is just supposed to keep the camera from falling off and is not designed to be mounted on a stable platform for shooting.
However, the thing to note is this design is also slightly deficient. Let me show you one of the 2 plates I bought and used.
Yes, it suffers from being extremely diffcult to near impossible to remove the camera plate once locked in while the other works kinda fine.
F38 Pro Base-plate/clamp
The second that might be free of this issue would be the new base-plate or clamp Falcam / Ulanzi introduced in their new tripod, the TreeRoot. Its called the F38 Pro clamp and so far, it is *only* found in the reveresed ballhead designed for that tripod.
I haven’t seen or tried this clamp personally but from the videos, it looks like it uses a similar system of rentention to the neck-strap base-plate, i.e. the wide-plastic piece while having a clamping lock that you can push to secure the plate. If this design works the same way as I think it works (i.e. similar to stanard Arca-Swiss base-plates) then it should work well even with F38 quick-release plates that have been worn slightly or even severely.
My Solution
This brings me perfectly to my solution to the problem : Use Arca-Swiss base-plates or clamps. Allow me to demonstrate how it works with a standard Arca-Swiss clamp.
As you can see, most if not all Arca-Swiss clamps will work very well with F38 quick-release plates, worn or not and this has been my solution for all my tripods and gimbals.
And until Falcam / Ulanzi comes out with plates that have clamps, this is how I will use them and avoid all the F38 base-plates or clamps.
July 4 2024 Update
This is an update following Falcam’s IG account finally responding to my questions after me trying to reach out to them since January 2024.
From our online conversation, Falcam has decided to provide me with 2 things :
- A free replacement for the worn half-cage that they will ship for free to me, I assume directly from China. I have yet to receive it though.
- A kinda statement of what they think about the issue after they have seen the previous video as well as quite a few additional photos from me and talking to me about the issue on IG
They also requested that I return the worn half-cage which I will do after I have recorded this video.
Now, let’s address their statement, English is not their (i.e. Falcam’s rep) first language so they ended sending a rather strangely worded statement that is written in first person and I obviously can’t post that up as I didn’t actually write that. So, I suggested to them that I rewrite it to correct it so that it looks like it is written by Falcam and I will put it up and talk about it here.
And…. this is my corrected version of the statement :
FALCAM’s team have tested the Sony A7M4 and other cage bottom plates separately by installing them to the gimbal stabilizer quick-release plates and there was no shifting nor play. Our initial judgement is that it may be due to the factory’s tooling issues that only occur rarely as we have very strict tolerances during manufacturing as well as strict quality control protocols.
Despite that, we will perform a detailed investigation of this worn cage issue. In order to express our apology, we will send you a new L-Bracket for A7M4 as the replacement. We are very sorry that this happened to you and promise that we will conduct more stringent quality inspections on all the products in the future
Alright, in summary, their official response is that the issue is due to a manufacturing defect and rarely occurs.
Now, I don’t buy it because the base worked perfectly for the first 3mths or so and only started to shift after some use… that doesn’t say manufacturing defect to me. As an ex-engineer (albeit in a completely unrelated field), it is my educated guess that it is a design and/or material selection issue.
Design issue as the original design goals obviously didn’t include designing a quick-release system that can handle typical wear & tear from professional usage gracefully or even adapting to it so that the quick-release system quality degraded.
Materials selection issue as.. I have a feeling that the individual camera plates and the cages use a different material. Which would make sense, I suspect the material on the camera plates might even be some sort of steel while the cages are made by much lighter and softer (might be cheaper). My individual camera plates are much older than the worn cage and they still work fine with negligible or nearly zero play on them.
Alright… enough of criticizing Ulanzi or Falcam, I have looked at the new F38 Pro base-plate videos a lot more and although I cannot be sure, it really does look like it might handle wear a little more gracefully or maybe even significantly better than the older base-plates.
I am hopeful for the future for this quick-release system but at the moment, I am still going to stay on my watch and see stance… and continue NOT using a single F38 base-plate or clamp.
I will still be using the F38 cages and camera plates however, but WITH standard arca-swiss clamps AND I would recommend that everyone does the same. It’s like having a tripod that has 1 leg that might loosen during use, I wouldn’t use it.
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