Performance
The overall performance of the tripod was basic but pretty consistent. It was able to give us good basic shots and most of the common motion shots, like panning and tilting.
Now, there were some issues, many of which relate to quirks in the tripod’s design. For example, due to the lightness of the tripod, I didn’t feel as though it was as secure as it could be, even with a light camera like my DVX100B. It didn’t shake very much, but the motion of its body and the movement of the rubberized-plastic joints reminded me more of a fiberglass construction than a steel one, which didn’t make me feel as confident as I would have liked.
The fluid head panning (which the company points out is a “fluid-effect” emulation) is a bit slow, causing pans to feel a bit stiff. Now, the beginning and ending of pans are smooth, so this slowness isn’t a huge detraction, but it is something to note. Tilting moves fairly smoothly, but there is a design flaw that’s a little irritating involving this. The oblong nob that allows you to loosen the head for smooth tilting butts directly into the mounting plate when it’s loosened. If you don’t have the camera extremely secure on the base plate, this can cause the camera to shift if you’re not paying attention.
This leads us to the base plate issue, which is probably the issue that I found the most annoying. First off, the thumbscrew which attaches the base plate to the camera has a very thin head, making it very hard to securely tighten the base plate by hand or by a coin. This means that for a truly secure mounting, you really need to use a screwdriver, which can be a pain if you are going to be switching from the tripod to a steady cam or other type of rig on a shoot.
Once you’ve done this, you must slide the plate onto the tripod itself, but it uses a pressure shoe that must be loosened to allow you to slide the camera and base plate onto the tripod. This wouldn’t be a problem except that, due to the physical spacing of the tightening dial, once loosened, you can only tighten the dial a half rotation without bumping into the camera. Eventually, you learn how far you can loosen the knob to be able to slide the camera in and still be able tighten it to make it fairly secure. It still wasn’t quite as secure as I would have liked, but it also didn’t slide off the tripod in the time I was using it, either.
Value
Compared to many tripods on the market which are ten to twenty times more expensive, the Clawball Fluid Head Tripod is a pretty good value. However, considering the lightness of it’s build and the basic features in comparison to it’s bigger brother, I would like to see it at the $150-$160 price point. Otherwise, with only $30 difference, most folks are going to decide that the extra four pounds really isn’t that big a difference and just go with the Pro-Camera version instead.
Final Comments
While it could stand be a bit sturdier with a few more features or brought in at a little lower price point, the Clawball Head Tripod is a good entry level tripod for most microfilmmakers. I look forward to seeing future variations of the tripod that Alzo releases.
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Ease
of Use |
8.0 |
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Depth
of Options |
7.0 |
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Performance |
6.0 |
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Value |
7.0 |
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Overall
Score |
7.0
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