I am very happy with the smoothness and sturdiness of this fluid head tripod! The tilt and pan are both very smooth as advertized! My zoom lens is very heavy so I needed the tri pod to be able to carry the load well. The bag it came seems sturdy as well. I'll be putting this equipment to the test for sure!

The tripod is two pounds lighter than the one I had been using and much shorter when collapsed. I really like that! However, when I tilt the camera head towards the locking nut, there can be interference with the base of the quick release plate. I've discovered that you can pull out the spring loaded handle to reset its location but there are two issues with doing that. 1. Its tedious and with my big hands, hard to get in there, and; 2. I'm right handed and it seems like the handle was placed on the wrong side. I have to work it with my left hand. Turning the camera around to swing the handle to the right puts it ahead of the camera where it's difficult to see, not to mention that the ball slot (used to clear the ball stem and tilt the camera forward) is now at the back of the camera. Pretty much useless there unless you take photos of the sky. I considered swapping out the Manfrotto ball head from my other tripod as it has the tightening handle at the rear, easily accessible but I felt like I would lose the weight advantage. So, I probably wouldn't have bought this if I had know how inconveniently placed all the control/tightening handles were, but again, I do like the weight savings.WEEKS LATER: After using this tripod for awhile I’m getting used to avoiding the design issues that caused the interference. However as a product designer myself I recognize that “workaround” should not be in a design engineers vocabulary. K&F contacted me and told me they have discussed the design issues with the team. As a result I’ve added a star to the rating.

It is difficult for my hands to use the tilt function accurately. Good value for money.

On the tripod itself there were only white fingerprints (like sunscreen??). The only "tilt function" of the tripod is very difficult to use (I then disassembled the mount and I saw that something very sticky made it difficult to use (although only where the camera can be turned sideways, here I want to see if I oil can improve the function). the tripod is very sturdy, so I decided to keep the tripod despite the flaws mentioned above because it is so stable and generally has a lot of great features, I still had to tinker a bit to find which function works how.But once you know how everything works and if I can fix the problem with the tilt function, the tripod is really good.

The tripod is two pounds lighter than the one I had been using and much shorter when collapsed. I really like that! However, when I tilt the camera head towards the locking nut, there can be interference with the base of the quick release plate. I've discovered that you can pull out the spring loaded handle to reset its location but there are two issues with doing that. 1. Its tedious and with my big hands, hard to get in there, and; 2. I'm right handed and it seems like the handle was placed on the wrong side. I have to work it with my left hand. Turning the camera around to swing the handle to the right puts it ahead of the camera where it's difficult to see, not to mention that the ball slot (used to clear the ball stem and tilt the camera forward) is now at the back of the camera. Pretty much useless there unless you take photos of the sky. I considered swapping out the Manfrotto ball head from my other tripod as it has the tightening handle at the rear, easily accessible but I felt like I would lose the weight advantage. So, I probably wouldn't have bought this if I had know how inconveniently placed all the control/tightening handles were, but again, I do like the weight savings.

WEEKS LATER: After using this tripod for awhile I’m getting used to avoiding the design issues that caused the interference. However as a product designer myself I recognize that “workaround” should not be in a design engineers vocabulary. K&F contacted me and told me they have discussed the design issues with the team. As a result I’ve added a star to the rating.

Great tripod. It does all the normal things a tripod can do such as 2-way tilt, pan, and swivel.

Like the practical applications as the ball head allows for tilt and swivel motion enable stable captures in any position and quick and easy to adjust - very good quality for the price

Monopods are for stability when a tripod is cumbersome but support is needed.