An overall sturdy, lightweight tripod based on good design concepts: three-section long legs, no-crank, long, quickly reversable column.

1. The quest for cheap production costs shows, particularly on the legs locks that keep one under the impression that they're going to break anytime. One of them in my unit leaves its leg section semistuck sometimes.

2. While on the legs locks, let me say that they swing in a way that make difficult to adjust the legs' lengths
while folded.

3. Incredibly, even long experienced tripod designers still fail to provided enough over positioning for the vertical swing plate, that should go at least from -5deg to 95deg. The -5deg are almost attainable removing a set screw, but you can reach only 90deg
in the other direction, on both the PH157 and PH157Q heads. (The PH157Q quick release design is good
though.)

4. The lenght of the neck that holds the column is faked with a plastic skirt that never touches the column. The column is secured only by a 2-inch
long inner single-sloted sleeve pressed by a single screw from outside. One misses a multi-sloted
sleeve pressing all around (that the plastic skirt fakes!).

5. Im still looking for a reason why the rubber feet of the legs have little dimples to make contact with the floor. Such dimples make the whole tripod resilient and slightly shaky when placed on any firm even surface.

An interesting, usable tripod that needs improvement.

Customer Service

Velbon-Hakuba USA promptly
directed me to dealers that
carry this product.

Similar Products Used:

Manfrotto, Slik