Opteka 70" Full Size Professional Photo / Video Tripod

I was looking for a tall tripod when I came across this model. Much to my surprise, there are professional tripods available for sale that are several hundred dollars. I'm not sure what a $700 tripod will do that this one will not. This is a great tripod at any price and it has excellent features. It's also the tallest tripod I could find without getting special extensions.

See many people complaning about it's cheap plastic built, but hello? this is a 30 bucks deal, what were you expecting, titanium? This tripod is excellent for begginers who don't want to spend a lot of money (like me). Completely recommend it.

PS: Just take it easy when handling it, it's just plastic hence it can easily be broken.

I ordered this tripod specifically because it was inexpensive and since I typicall hike into spots that are pretty rough on equiptment I didn't want to invest lots of money. When the tripod arrived I was a little let down at all the plastic parts. I wonder if it is going to be able to hold up long term. But thus far it has worked like a champ and you certainly can't beat the price for a 70" tripod (which is nice not having to stoop to use it).

Amazon recommends this product when you buy binoculars. I decided to buy to support my 20 x 80 giant binoculars for stargazing. I find the binos are way to heavy (4 lbs) to be firmly supported by the fragile structure of the Opteka 70" Photo / Video Tripod. It's extremely difficult to keep images of star clusters, nebulae not to say double stars in the center of the field of view. Altougth they are fine for terrestrial observation I think the structure is rather fragile and has excessive play. I would not recommend this if your intention is to use them with larger binos for astronomy. They migth work fine with smaller than 10x50 binos. In addition, after one month I already broke one of the tripod's plastic leg hinges.

On paper, this is a good tripod to own. It was cheap, it is light (to me), it extends relatively tall, and does what a tripod is basically meant to do.

In practice, there's a few quirks that I'm not sure I like so much, and that I think can prove to be a problem in more advanced usage.

1. Build quality - is what you'd expect from a bargain tripod. Lots of plastic, and adjustment parts do not feel sturdy enough to hold up to repeated tightening/loosening. There is a soft plastic insert/bushing that centers the main shaft when making height adjustments, and on mine this bushing has become separated from its housing and moves up and down with the shaft during height changes.

2. Smoothness of operation - the head does not swivel easily for smooth panning, although I don't know that many would use a tripod for panning shots. Same goes for the horizontal adjustment, its simply not very good. You need to have the adjustments locked down tight so the camera doesn't droop, but you need to keep them loose to change the angle. Micro-adjustments, when taking product shots in a lightbox for example, become very difficult.

During last summer, I carried this around to get shots at the racetrack, where I do amateur motorsports photography. It worked well to get consistent still shots, but I hand-held the camera for panning shots. Now, I've relegated the tripod to very basic home use, such as the above-mentioned lightbox photo shoots and portraits here and there. It will just start collecting dust as soon as I pick up a quality monopod + mini-tripod combo, as both would serve my purposes better than the Opteka.