![]() To store the tripod or travel with it, the legs fold in the reverse to a length of 16.9" and fit into the included carry bag. The head also has a quick release system, which is supplied with a dedicated 200PL PRO plate. The 496 Center Ball Head, which has a load capacity of 22.1 lb, has two independent knobs for the ball movement and for panning, and the main locking knob includes an adjustable tension control on the side of the knob. At the same time, the built-in 90° column mechanism allows you to pull the center column out and slide it back in on its side, letting you shoot right over your subject. The ergonomic leg-angle button disengages the legs, so you can splay the legs at different heights, and you can completely splay the legs out to a minimum height of 3.5" for low-angle or macro photography. It has an average of 4.8 stars from over 800 reviews at B&H Photo.The 3.9 lb Befree GT XPRO Carbon Fiber Travel Tripod with 496 Center Ball Head from Manfrotto is a 4-section support with the twist M-Lock leg system that quickly unlocks with a 90° turn, enabling you to extend the legs along with the rapid center column to a maximum height of 64.6". It’s pricey, though, and uses an unusual head design that can be confusing. If you’re looking for something that folds down even smaller, the Peak Design Carbon Fiber Travel Tripod is as light as the Befree and can carry as big a load. If you’re looking for a travel tripod that packs down really small or don’t mind the extra weight of aluminum, then consider looking at these alternatives. There are a lot of lightweight tripods out there, and often it just comes down to finding the right one for you and your unique needs. I don’t really travel for work anymore - who does right now? - but the Manfrotto carbon fiber Befree tripod is still strapped to my camera backpack, ready to go at a moment’s notice. 4 x payments of R 5 432.50 with ADD TO CART. But Manfrotto’s proprietary M-locks do the job and are fast enough to use, even if they aren’t as speedy as snap locks. Manfrotto Befree GT XPRO Carbon Fiber Travel Tripod with 496 Center Ball Head. Generally, I prefer snap locks to twist locks to extend and contract tripod legs - on earlier tripods I had, the twist locks always managed to loosen up exactly as I was about to take a perfect shot, and they were close to impossible to tighten up enough in cold climates or when it was raining. Each of the legs is separately adjustable, allowing me to use it in pretty much any kind of terrain and at most practical angles. It’s maneuverable and stays where it’s supposed to. The ball head is easy to use and fairly universal to standard camera mounts. It’s also sleekly designed, without unnecessary doodads that can catch on straps, get stuck in foliage or gather dirt or sand. I can’t fit it inside my camera backpack, but I can easily strap or bungee it to the outside, and I have never minded its weight even on the longest, hottest shoots. The carbon fiber Befree itself weighs about 2.7 pounds, noticeably less than aluminum tripods, and slides down to just over 16 inches. And it was never especially unwieldy even when the tripod was fully extended to about 59 inches. That was certainly not light, but it was well under the Befree’s impressive maximum recommended payload of about 18 pounds. Once I switched to the carbon fiber Befree, the tripod stopped vibrating in a fraction of the time and I could get my work done that much more quickly - no small thing when I still had 1,400 shots to get through and 800 more acres to see before moving onto the next site.Īs for a tripod’s weight capacity, when I was outside Lincoln, Nebraska, shooting the 2017 North American solar eclipse, I mounted it with my Canon 5D Mark III, a 70-200 mm telephoto lens, 2x extender and solar filter, about 6.5 pounds in all. ![]() With the aluminum tripods I originally started off with, I’d have to count down the seconds after each slight breeze before the metal stopped thrumming and I could safely shoot. I often had to shoot 360-degree panoramas with an 8 mm fisheye lens that had to remain perfectly still for shots in all four directions lest it misalign and require a total reshoot of every shot in the series.
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