Quote:
Originally Posted by dcstep
Lots of new players have entered the tripod/head market in the last few years. Most seem to have all the features of the best tripods from the past. I hope that they stand up to usage. I think that my Induro is made in Chine, like most of the new entrants and it's held up for over five-years. With my Arca-Swiss head, I had around $900 invested. I too did a direct comparison to Gitzo and saw no reason to go with Gitzo.
I see that you got the twist-locks. Sirui, you have a choice. Did you compare?
Dave
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That ball head you have is quite expensive, but with those large lenses you use, i can see that it's necessary. I really wanted to get it just to know it would last forever and handle anything i mounted to it.
The Sirui i handled in the store had lever locks and do think it's faster. Just like the twist locks, you can unlock all of them at once and locking each one individually is faster than twisting each one individually. Retracting is faster for me as well because i just flip the levers, retract all sections and lock all at once.
Even though i didn't see lever locks as an option for this particular model, I probably would have stayed with the twist locks anyway. I'm used to them as you can see from my previous tripod. Though that tripod only had 6 locks to actuate. Now with 9 i'm sure the process will be marginally slower. The 1/2 turn to unlock and lock is nice. On the unlock, it has a notch you can feel so once you get to it, you know you can extend or retract. Then the lock has the same notch feel, gets tight and then a final sort of click for lock. But all within a 1/2 rotation. And even with the extra twist lock, i can still actuate 3 at once with one hand.
I can't get over how light it is. I knew it was only about 5 pounds lighter than my other set up, but it feel much lighter than that. I suppose it's due to the center of gravity changing. All of the weight is right where the camera attaches. So it handles very well compared to my last one which had a lot of weight in it's legs. Also learned last night that all of the O-rings for keeping water and gunk out of the legs are user serviceable and they even provide instructions on how to maintain / replace them along with part numbers.
I brought it to work with me and hopefully i'll have some down time to mess around with it some more.