SmallRig AD-Pro8 FreeBlazer Counterbalance Carbon Fiber Video Tripod Kit 77 Video Tripod with 6-Step Counterbalance 4-Step Pan Tilt

You can always spend more, but why? This one has the features you need for a 15 lb or lighter rig. Looks nice and has smooth motion. The single latch for each leg better than you expect. Read more

This SmallRig AD-Pro8 carbon fiber tripod is awesome. It is so lightweight and yet holds a pretty heavy camera rig without a worry at all. It came with a carrying bag, phone mount, and really nice fluid head that is lightyears better than what I was using previously. I took this tripod on a couple of client video shoots over the past few months and it did take a little while to get used to it, because leveling and adjusting the height is just different than traditional photo or video tripods, but once I got the hang of it, I really started liking it more and more and now I've listed my old aluminum Manfrotto video tripod on marketplace. The main things I like about this tripod are... It's lightweight. Made of mostly carbon fiber, it's extremely light compared to a similarly sized aluminum tripod. It's so much easier to carry around on a shoot and yet it is still very sturdy, especially if you hang your camera bag from the center. It's very easily adjustable. From raising and lowering to getting it level, I was surprised how quickly you can adjust the tripod and get a solid footing outside on uneven terrain, or inside in a controlled environment. The fluid pan head is excellent... a lot of tripods come with pretty low end fluid heads or none at all but the fluid head on this tripod is really well made and has a lot of features like a hydraulic counterbalance and dampening system for really smooth pans. It's well made. Really everything you've come to expect from SmallRig... their gear is very high quality and this tripod is no exception. This tripod is expensive but I think it's a great value when you compare it to pro gear that is 2-3x the cost. Overall, I really like this tripod and it has earned it's place as the primary video tripod we use when shooting with our large camera rig. Very happy with it and definitely recommend it. Read more

I love everything that I have bought from Smallrig over the last few years. The quality of gear vs the price is pretty good. These sticks are so great especially for the price. My only gripe is that the drag isn't draggy enough. Pans need tension for smoothness. This comes up short. But For $800 I'll live with it for now. Good Fluid heads are worth their weight in gold but most are very expensive. Overall, it's Well Built. Light weight. Looks cool. Please Smallrig. Just add MORE DRAG and I'm staying! Read more

The pan and tilt drag are both too light. Even at the highest settings a slight touch can move either. Also, the counterbalance has difficulty with a camera of moderate weight. I have an S5 m2x in a cage with a Lumix 24-105 f4 lens and it's almost too light for the counterbalance. Otherwise, the tripod/head are great. Very smooth doing pans and/or tilts. Never any stiction. The tripod itself is a very solid platform. Read more

The media could not be loaded. I am using the SmallRig AD-Pro8 Carbon Fiber Video Tripod for taking photos when using a long lens and for some video recording. This is the first fluid head tripod I’ve used, and I was impressed with it and the dampening the tripod’s controls provide. It has many great features, including a single cam lock to adjust the length of each leg; pan damping that was easy to configure and felt smooth and solid when in use; and tilt damping and counter-balance controls that were easy to access and provide much smoother tilt control than possible with a ball-head tripod. Without a camera attached, the default balance point for the head is tilted slightly backwards. The tilt leveled out when I put a 6.5-pound camera on the tripod using the quick release (QR) plate and adjusting the QR plate forward or backward could be used to fine tune and level the camera without locking it in place. The instructions with the camera state that the counterbalance can configure the tripod and camera to tilt forward or backward 30-degrees or less and maintain that position hands-free. I found that I could configure this 30-degree hands-free setup using a combination of the tilt-damping, counterbalance and QR plate position. This would not be possible using my other ball-head tripod. I did find that very small adjustments to the QR plate position affected the camera’s ability to hold a 30-degree tilt, and it took a bit of trial and error to get the tilt and counterbalance controls just right. One drawback of the SmallRig is the weight at 12.8 pounds – heavy relative to my ball-head tripod that weighs 4.27 pounds. Both the SmallRig and the ball-head can hold 17.6 pounds, but the ball head feels twitchy carrying 6.5 pounds, while the Small Rig feels rock steady with that same weight. I would be nervous with 17.6 pounds on the ball-head but would have no concern with that maximum weight on the SmallRig. It is probably not fair to compare the SmallRig to my ball-head, as the SmallRig is about six to eight times the price of the ball-head tripod, but the SmallRig is also a tremendous step-up in functionality and capability. One minor dislike of the SmallRig was no D-ring screw for 1/4-inch and 3/8-inch mounting screws on the QR plate, instead you need to use the larger of two provided Allen wrenches to tighten the screws when attaching a camera to the QR plate. I can live with this. :-) The instructions included with the SmallRig tripod are decent, but one diagram was a bit off. The diagram points to the wrong location for tightening the leg height adjustment cam. It points to the bracket at the top of the leg, while the Allen screw for the adjustment is located on the backside of the cam-lever bracket. Read more

The SmallRig AD-Pro8 FreeBlazer is an excellent video mount! It's heavy duty and is feature rich and plenty stout enough for today's smaller video rigs. I would not hesitate to include a boom on this mount. Very smooth movement and the controls are easy and intuitive. My favorite thing is the leg adjustment; one lever and it moves the whole length of the leg. Brilliant! It can also sit very low to the ground. The mount rivals and beats most anything on the market in that price range. Great product! Read more