Rest in peace, Mike.
I'll keep this thread up.
I took my acquisition to the basement of the building because I don't have many opportunities left to do so, yet I always planned to shoot some.
This is my first sturdy tripod with a ballhead. My previous one is a super cheap 13 € one. Peak Design Travel Tripod is not super cheap. I went for the CF version going at 499 €. CF stands for, according to what it says on the tripod, "Carbon F'n Fiber".
I did think long and hard about other very compact travel tripods that would lose in the diameter compactness but win with traditional ballhead design.
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I have zero experience about ballheads and sturdy tripods. My initial 15-minute test wants to tell me: this is a sturdy tripod but the ballhead is not as nice as I'd imagine an ordinary ballhead would be. It's not silky smooth to turn around and there's a tiny hint of play when you fasten it. I did expect this from watching an hour of various youtube reviews.
Despite what people say I didn't find it particularly cumbersome to work with portrait orientation even though the movements "are limited" this way. I'm not a panorama shooter so a lot of those issues will miss me by a mile.
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My 13-euro tripod is a lever design just like PDTT. I really like levers. It is easy to adjust a leg, it's quick to open and quick to pack up. But somehow when I was extending the tripod down in the field I managed to pull from the wrong place and the entire leg came off. What's weirder, I put it back in and it seems to be just like before.
Overall it's not bad.
But perhaps this is not a thing that would turn things around for a tripod hater.