Bent-bolt design is much more versatile than a standard tripod. Fast set up once you get used to it.

The famous "Benbo Drift" is still there.

This is both a great product and a poor product. The configurations are extremely useful for macro and weird terrain and they work well in shallow water thanks to the inverted legs.

The big drawback to the Benbo 1 is the famous "Benbo Drift." There is no way to tighten down the lever enough to fight the bent bolt's tendency to slowly drift when the geometry is in relatively high-torque configurations. This was true with the original, it was true with the "new" model just a couple of months ago. The newsgroups are filled with solutions but all require that you disassemble the tripod and rework the parts.

A much better buy, if you can find it, is the Uni-Loc tripods. These tripods are built by the same guys who founded Benbo (they kept the patents when they sold the company). The Uni-Loc tripods have lots of improvements and there is absolutely no drifting even under heavy loads.

Note that the Benbo's little brother, the Trekker, is excellent and does not have the same severe drifting problem as the Benbo 1.

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Similar Products Used:

Uni-Loc, Gitzo.