Customer Reviews

Sony VCT-R640 Lightweight Tripod for DSCV1/P41/W1/P93/P73/P92/P100/P150/F88/F828 Digital Cameras

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Length:: 5:03 Mins

I give it 5 stars! The tripod does tilt up and down and pan back and forth nicely (I realized that I didn't say anything about that in the video). Please see video for more details.

Length:: 3:42 Mins

Excellent Tripod for the money, super fluid pan and tilt motion head.
Watch the Video samples I provided. Great for both small video cameras, and large dslr cameras. Excellent price!!

For a cheap tripod, the pan and tilt are very smooth. Wanna complain? Buy a $20 tripod from Walmart and try to pan smoothly with it. Wanna moan? Buy a pro tripod for a couple bills and moan about how thin your wallet has become.

This tripod is a good value, smooth operating - a step up from the junk tripods that are too short, too fragile and too jumpy. I gave it four stars instead of five only because there are better tripods out there if you want to spend four or five times the money.

When I was shopping for this, one review caught my eye saying this tripod was "mostly metal." That claim, along with the light weight in the description, were the two things that sold me on the model.

Well, NEITHER ARE TRUE. This thing is indeed mostly plastic made to look like black metal. Apparently, this fooled the other reviewer, but not me. The only metal I found on the whole thing were the bars of the legs themselves, and the bar of the swivel handle. Every single other part of this thing is black plastic. All of the hinges and joints are plastic. The leg braces are plastic. The height crank is plastic (yikes!). Even the center tube is PLASTIC. Overall, it looks nice, I'll give them that; but please know that you are NOT getting a "mostly metal" tripod here. No way.

Now, that by itself wouldn't be too bad, except that you'd expect something that's nearly all plastic to be much lighter - it isn't. The part of the description that reads:

Product Dimensions: 22.3 x 5 x 4.9 inches ; 1 pounds

..is WRONG. Maybe this thing weighs 1 pound on the moon, but it's much heavier where I'll be using it, here on earth. It is, indeed, much closer to it's described shipping weight:

Shipping Weight: 4 pounds

Why the large discrepancy? Who know? Sloppiness on Amazon's part, I guess. At any rate, the weight was key for me, and there were several tripods lighter than 4 lbs which I passed up. I guess I should have trusted my instincts when they told me this was too good to be true.

Anyway, if I'm going to buy a plastic tripod, I want it to be much lighter than 4 lbs.

I bought this tripod a short while ago, and I'm extremely glad I did. It's very light and easy to carry around, even without a carrying bag or even a handle, neither of which it comes with. The bubble level built into it is very handy to have and works well. And with a little practice, you can break and set it, camera attached, in 10 to 15 seconds (provided you keep the quick release tab screwed to the bottom of your camera, like I do), so you won't miss that once in a lifetime shot. It's also very inexpensive and easy to use, with a head that has a fantastic range of movement. And while the legs, when fully extended, don't bring it all the way up to eye level, it brings it close enough to keep you comfortable while looking through the camera. If need be, just buy a small folding travel chair to carry with you and use with the tripod.

I use this tripod for my Canon T2i. Not a bad tripod, I like the quick release and it seems stable. Plus its only $28 dollars, and works just fine with my 18-55mm IS and 75mm-300mm lens.

This is a nice lightweight tripod from Sony. Stable and well built. I have used it with both still and video cameras without any problems. It would be nice if it came with a travel bag of some sort.

For the low price, this is an excellent tripod. The main drawbacks of this tripod are the lack of an anchor for a bag, somewhat jerky panning, a less precise leveler (it is a circle with a dot in the middle), and the many plastic parts.

I use my tripod with my Canon PowerShot Pro Series S5 IS 8.0MP Digital Camera with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and it always feels sturdy. Even without a bag, this tripod should be able to handle most cameras, and the rubber feet on the bottom have excellent grip. The legs are metal, but most of the parts of plastic. Despite the shipping weight listed (4 lb), this tripod weighs under 3 lb. The current listed weight is 2.6 lb and when I weighed it I got 2.8 lb. I find it pretty light and easy to take with me, and the plastic is of good quality and very sturdy.

The panning isn't super smooth, but unless you need really smooth panning for high quality videos, you probably won't notice any problems. The dot-style leveler also isn't perfect, but it should be fine for eyeballing to make sure that you are not tilting badly. The quick-release head is very handy, and is a feature not always found on cheaper tripods. All in all, for the low price, this is a great tripod and I would purchase it again.

It's a good tripod... for the price. Somewhere better than the $20 stuff at WalMart but not quite as nice as even the lower level Manfrotto tripods - starting maybe $120 range? Specs from another site puts the weight at a more reasonable 2.65 lbs - which seems about right from my estimation. If you really believed that this was a full sized but only 1 pound tripod... well, I wouldn't put my SLR on a tripod that weighs only 1 pound. Only the legs are aluminum, the rest is plastic, albeit quality plastic.

As it is, it holds my Canon Xti with a somewhat heavy 24-70 F2.8 lens (lens ~ 2 lbs) without fear of dropping it, although it does get a little shaky when you extend up the center column. The little crank on the side is not very useful either, I usually just pull the center column up or down. It's rated for 6.61 lbs max load... and it could probably do that if the load is centered well. The little bubble level does come in useful at times.

Perfectly adequate for a point-and-shoot camera and most SLR cameras without the super heavy lenses. Good weight, reasonable quality, well priced for what it is.

I use this "Handycam" tripod for my Sony Alpha DSLR-A700 which doesnt say is compatable through Sony. Works like it should, very lightweight, easy to use, and a great tripod.