Peak Design Travel Tripod (Carbon Fiber)

Wow. I’m impressed. So out of the box it’s impressive. It’s really a sight to behold, and when you have it in your hands you will feel the weight of it and wonder how it feels so well built while having the weight of cheap plastic. It’s bold, it’s strong, its stable. The cherry on top is how easy it is to use. Setting and resetting your position is so easy. It takes minimal movement. I can go from fully loose, to tightened down without ruining my shot. There’s zero sag. When you set it, it stays. I also love how compact it is. Aside from it being as light as a croissant, it’s so tiny that it makes storage a breeze. I’ve tried inside my bag and out. I settled on outside, and thanks to a durable case strap, I can feel confident in the way I mounted it. I couldn’t be happier. This is well worth the money.

Excellent Portable Tripod. This is my second Peak Design Travel Tripod. The first one was apparently so nice that an unnamed TSA agent decided it would be better off in his possession than mine. That said, it was such a well designed tripod that I was willing to purchase a replacement immediately, which says a lot considering the price of this thing. It’s not cheap, but its worth the cost to me.First, it’s important to understand what this thing really is. It’s not the most stable tripod in the work. There are much heavier sturdier tripods that are great for studio work, or if you don’t mind lugging something four times heavier around with you. However, I have yet to find anything even close to as sturdy as this item is that is as easy to carry with you, or that is so well designed. This extends all the way down to the travel case for the tripod, which is a little padded fabric sleeve that keeps the tripod protected without adding an ounce more weight than necessary, and has handy attachment points for clipping to whatever other gear you have.Collapsed, the tripod is small and maybe more importantly well balanced. Its not overly top heavy or awkward to carry. It fits in water bottle pockets on backpacks (top will extend out, of course, good to have a strap too). Personally I usually clip it to the bottom of whatever pack I’m using using the reinforced loops on the travel pouch.In use the tripod is great. Its sturdy and very adjustable. Stability is greatly enhanced by hanging your backpack or other item from the hook on the center post, but even without that I had no issues and I use some pretty big lenses. Again, there are sturdier tripods, but this is meant for travel and easy carry, and considering how light it is I’m very impressed with the stability.The swivel mount is also well designed, but be aware it’s different from a typical ball-mount tripod head. It has a lot of adjustability, and I really like using it once I got comfortable with it. But I’m not sure it’s quite as adjustable as my Sirui. It’s possible to mount a third party head on this tripod, but that requires the Universal Head Adapter from Peak Design, an additional purchase.Finally, there are a few additional nice touches with this tripod. It has a built-in mobile phone adapter. Yes, I’m guessing most people buying this tripod have “real” cameras to use with it, but it’s a nice touch, and there are some uses for being able to easily mount your phone at times. It also has built in storage for the only tool you need for adjustments, a little allen wrench. The head is reversable, so you can actually mount your camera between the legs to get a really low shot.All in all, it’s the best portable tripod I’ve found, and I’ve looked around a lot.

I thought that the Peak Design carbon fiber tripod was an innovative design, compact, and well suited for travel photography. It uses an unusual design and configuration of the legs and center pole to make it very compact, with flip leg locks, and a unique low profile ball head. It came with a bag and plastic box to prevent damage, say if it went into a luggage bag on a plane. I was looking for a tripod with flip locks for setting up rapidly, would not jam if gotten wet, and frankly I was tired of twist locks that froze up or failed to lock. I have three other tripods with twist locks.

When I set up the tripod I noticed that a slight bump would move across the floor; this is due to the hard rubber food on the legs. Adding a camera bag to help with this issue flexed the tripod legs, and I felt as though the lower legs might break. I have a Sony a7r4 and 3 heavy G master lenses, and while adequate for two of the lenses, the long telephoto exceeded my tolerances for stability. The flexing of the legs was likewise an issue with the long lens. One way to increase stability, particularly if windy, is to spread the legs; how did I not notice they did not state what angles the legs spread? Only two angles? No way would this tripod be stable enough for long exposures indoors or outdoors. The center column is easily raised and lowered, but is loose if not secured when down. They make a proprietary spike foot for the tripod, which would help some for stability outdoors, but there is no ability to put on another longer spike, or a rubber foot with a wider “foot print” for increased stability.

I am not a fan of ball heads, and I often photograph with a pan tilt or geared head for precision framing, so I can’t comment on that aspect of the tripod.

I am returning the tripod for the above reasons, but I really wanted to like it.

In terms of acting as a tripod, no real issues. The clamp on the head worked with my arca-compatible l-bracket adapter out of the box; the thing itself was stable enough, particularly if I didn’t use the thinnest legs and hung my bag from the hook; and the ball head was easily adjusted to get the shot I wanted.

The carrying case was nice, but only took a couple weeks before the zipper jammed. Normally not a problem, but given that I’ve already chipped the tripod a few times when it fell, I kind of want to leave it in that bag. The box feels superfluous– if I were keeping the thing in storage a lot, it might be nice to make it more stackable, but I can’t see bringing it with me on a shoot.

So how about as a Peak Design, carbon fiber tripod?

The setup is as fast as advertised– fast enough that I was tempted several times to try to use in a location where tripods normally wouldn’t be allowed, knowing that by the time someone walked over to yell at me, I’d have the shot and be putting it away again. While I never did wind up using it this way, the sheer speed of setting up and taking it down did mean that I used it a few times where I probably wouldn’t have bothered with more complicated equipment.

While it was cool to know that there was a cell phone holder built-in, I never used it, even when it meant that I wasn’t in some group shots. But to be fair, this was more about not having verified in advance that my Bluetooth remote was working, or wanting to get the shot with a real camera, than it was about the holder being difficult to use.

What about all that expensive carbon fiber?

Honestly, I can’t say how much of a difference a half-pound in weight makes, particularly when I’ve got 20+ pounds of glass in the bag. But after hauling this through 10 miles of rain and wind, any lost weight was appreciated.

When I initially set the tripod up at home, it felt like it was going to be way too flimsy and unstable, but once I was in the field, and with weight on the hook, it felt solid. Would the aluminum have been any less stable? Can’t say, but it doesn’t feel like there could be all that much difference. And if you’re operating in such tight margins, is a *travel* tripod really the right tool for the job?

Some negatives: if you use their adapter, you have to install it with a hex wrench. Getting an integrated loop on the screw would be preferable. And yes, they do include a wrench in a holder that attaches to a tripod leg, but the tool slips out fairly easily, and the holder itself detached on me at least once when I didn’t intend it to.

The carrying case does have a hidden pocket where you can safely store the tool, but then you’re committing to using the case. I’m surprised that they didn’t store the wrench in the central pillar, along with the cell phone holder: there seems to be plenty of space, and it shouldn’t have been that hard to redesign the wrench to fit. A future upgrade, perhaps. My solution was to just gaff-tape the whole thing to the leg– not the most elegant, but it works.

I’ll note that if you’re already using an arca-compatible adapter, all this becomes moot: you can store their adapter and tool in the carrying case and move on with your life.

My only other real negative is super-trivial: the ball head has to slot back into the legs when you collapse it, and that’s not immediately obvious at first. I had a couple times where I was trying to put the tripod back in the case, only for it to not fit because it wasn’t correctly collapsed.

The last negative is straightforward: the price.

I bought this because I was doing a once-in-a-lifetime trip, and I didn’t want to look back and say “if I had only spent a couple hundred bucks more, maybe I would have gotten that shot.”

I don’t know that this made the difference, but it did bring peace of mind.

I’ll be curious to see if this winds up replacing my traditional tripods. I’ll probably invest in the adapter so I can use it with my astrophotography head, because that would be a significant weight savings if it’s stable enough.

But because it’s so light and compact, I can also see myself throwing it in the car for times I normally wouldn’t think about bringing along a tripod. Maybe that cell phone holder will wind up getting used after all.

For weight reference, I was using this with a Nikon Z9, typically with a 14-24 F2.8 or 24-70 F2.8. I haven’t tried stacking my photos yet, but things looked good on the back of the camera, even in windy conditions. I suspect it would work even better with a more traditional landscape camera body.

Mein altes Stativ ist ein wenig in die Jahre gekommen und ich habe mich auf die Suche nach einem neuen gemacht. Da ich viel reise sollte es natürlich leicht und kompakt sein, schnell auf- und auch wieder abgebauten und das ganze vielleicht auch mehrfach an einem Abend. Ich habe mir so ziemlich alle Stative angeschaut, die es für diesen Zweck gibt, irgendwas hat mir überall nicht gefallen und auch beim Peak Design Travel Tripod finde ich nicht alles perfekt, meinen Ansprüchen wird es aber in den meisten Punkten gerecht.Die Klemmverschlüsse ermöglichen einen schnellen Auf- und Abbau, das Gewicht ist großartig, das Packmaß auch, ebenso wie die mitgelieferte Tasche, mit der man das Stativ in jeden Rucksack stecken kann, es bleibt geschützt, alles andere aber auch.Der Kugelkopf ist neu gedacht, dass man die Mittelsäule nun ein wenig (!) ausfahren muss, schadet der Stabilität nicht, beeinflusst aber das Packmaß äußerst positiv. Zugegeben für Freunde des gepflegten Panoramas wird es schwierig, Lösungen bzw. Kompromisse finden sich aber auch hier.Dass die Beine nicht rund sondern eher eckig sind, ist beim packen ein Vorteil, alles greift schön ineinander. Einen negativen Aspekt bei der Stabilität konnte ich bisher nicht entdecken.Spikes muss man ggf. separat erwerben – zugegebenermaßen hätte man die bei dem Preis auch beilegen können. Trotzdem ist es gerade auf Reisen an der Sicherheitskontrolle ein Vorteil. Das Stativ kann im Fotorucksack ins Handgepäck, die Spikes in den Koffer.Für Fotografen, die viel unterwegs sind, ist das PD Stativ perfekt und ich habe mir die Entscheidung nicht leicht gemacht, der Preis ist abschreckend, mag sein, es gibt noch teurere Stative, aber am Ende ist ein Stativ, ein Stativ, ein Stativ… Dafür bekommt man hier ein sehr durchdachtes Gerät, dass all denen, die es leicht und praktisch mögen viel Freude bereiten wird. Alle Einzelteile sind ersetzbar und eine lebenslange Garantie gibt es auch dazu. Was die dann bringt, wird man wohl erst im Garantiefalle sehen.Nach einigem Abwägen habe ich mich trotz des Preises bewusst für das Gerät entschieden, da es mir von allen möglichen Kandidaten als am besten durchdacht erscheint und meinen Bedürfnissen am nächsten kommt.

Em sembla tal qual s’indica en la publicitat. És petit, encara que pesa més del que m’esperava. La seva posta en escena és rapida i àgil. Una bona compra