Review 5 of 11
Price Paid:
$75.00 Summary: a great first tripod for all you turks out there, trash those feather weight tripods with the plastic heads and fiddy controls, get this metal monster slik.
what to do with you crappy tripod that comes ''free'' with you brand-new-fresh-out-of-the-box-shrinked-wrapped camera kit?
1) give it to a friend.
2) use it as a light stand for small flash units on a photoslave.
and please, ignore all the other lower grade slik products like the U series, these are the feather light tripods i am talking about. stick with their better tripods which are really bargains considering their construction. Strengths: 1)price: again from a students standpoint.
2)variable leg splay is really versatile: you can prop this thing with one leg on the floorboard, one on the coffee table and one off the bookshelf, in short, good for cramped rooms.
3)reasonably light weight but definitely not feather light.
4) good construction: i dropped mine many times down the stairs and it survived with a lot of scars though, heck i even sit on it(on the center column assembly or body) when i am waiting for my bus- just don''t seat on the legs or on a tripod fully extended.
5) gorgeous black, love it.
6) goes low and you can invert to center post to go even lower.(off the floor literally)
7) invert center post for copy work.
8) all this for less than a hundred bucks? believe me, brother this is as good as it gets. Weaknesses: 1)I have to repeat what all the other posters said: those darn screw locks that really slows things down, definitely not the tripod to set up in a hurry for pin sharp UFO landings at night pictures.
2)also, the rubber feet slides a bit on grass of slippery pavements, even marble floors. and no provision for spike feet.
3)the lack of a center brace(which makes the variable leg splay possible) actually makes this tripod less stable: the legs will spread when weight is apply downwards.
5) this is a big problem: the chrome sections of the tilt and pan handles rusts. Similar Products Used: expensive stuff from school, bogens, manfrotos: i don''t remember the specific models but i still like my black slik.
oh! they have a mini version of this model in black, wonder if you seen it, rea Customer Service: i thought tocad website is pretty straight forward and imformative without a lot of ad-talk.
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