Today we're gonna review the Compact Action tripod by Manfrotto.
Quick introduction: I was looking for a travel tripod, so I was looking for
something compact, light, on the cheap side but
still quite sturdy and the compact action
was the best solution I found online that could match
those four requirements. I found this piece of gear on Amazon for £54
and you can also find the link of the item down in the description tab
where you can find the list actually of
all the items and the gear I use for my vlogs and my
professional videos. So let's start with the unboxing of the tripod. So there
it is, that's how the Manfrotto Compact Action
comes. This is the box, nice and compact but
i'll show you what you find inside too. The tripod comes in the usual
Manfrotto padded bag, we'll also find some
instructions manual with, of course, everything you need to
know, how to operate and open up the tripod. And also that's
quite useful, it's a mount it's an adapter for
Sony cameras it's actually curved so your Sony cameras can
fit nicely on top of the tripod and that's actually it about the unboxing,
there's not much else to see let's talk about the tripod
and the specs. The material is aluminium, it's very
light, the total weight is 1.2 kilograms, again it was one of the lightest tripods
I found for traveling. Tt is a five sections legs,
which means we're gonna have five different sections,
one, two, three, four, five and that's how it looks like. I really
like this system to close the legs because it's very quick as well,
just slide them in and you can close them at the same time,
the four sections, so very handy once again. And then, of course, you have
an extension at the center of the tripod. When the legs are closed
the total length of the tripod is 45.3 centimeters but when you extend the four
sections here, and also the central arm, you can reach a
total length of 155 centimeters. I was actually afraid this
tripod couldn't fit my height. I'm 180 centimeters,
whenever I film myself for vlogging or whatever,
but actually 155 centimeters is enough with the camera on top to be able to
film myself, so if you are more or less as tall as I
am, this tripod is actually good for you, if
you want to film yourself and the camera will actually be at the
same level of your face. The compact action is a ball head tripod,
literally you have a ball here inside the head that allows
you to move the mount and the handle 360 degrees and
also it allows you to pan and tilt around it. Of course you can
lock or loosen up the head with this wheel here in the
front; if you rotate the wheel upward then you're gonna lock the handle,
if you pull it down you're gonna unlock it and you're actually free to move
around the ball. Also on one of the side you have a locking mode which is
actually a lever to switch between the photo mode and video mode.
The difference between the two modes is that when you are in video mode you can
only tilt and pan your camera but then when you
switch to the photo mode then you are completely free
and you can also use the roll axis of
the tripod. I think when you are in video mode, it
could be smooth enough if you have a bit of a
gentle touch to achieve smooth results but I'm gonna try to film something and
show some clips to you right now.
I got this tripod to actually fit my Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4k but
also my mirrorless, my Sony mirrorless, when I need to take photos and when I'm
traveling. The safety payload for this tripod is 1.5 kilograms
so definitely no problem when I just mount the camera and one
of the lenses on top. I only had one problem so
far when I mounted my Blackmagic with the cage, the v-mount and the monitor,
that's definitely more than 1.5 kilo and the only problem I faced,
because as you can see i'm doing reviews videos, it was when I mounted the camera
on top here and then i tried to tilt the tripod down
to film something on the table and that's when
the handle and the ball were not strong enough to hold the camera but once again,
if you only have the camera and the lens, that's super fine. Let's talk about the
adapter: that's kind of interesting because it's completely
different from anything I've seen before. This is the actual mount, you can open up
this lever and now this tiny adapter will come out.
It's a one-quarter inch screw that of course you can screw
under your camera and then, once you've done that, you
want to fit it inside this hole here and lock it with the lever at the back.
It felt a bit weird actually in the beginning because the
adapter is still loose inside the mount and you can actually lock it with this
wheel on the side, you can tighten it up. I also want to
show you something else I've done because I use
the same camera on the tripod but also I need to switch sometimes very quickly to
a Ronin S gimbal, so what I've done, I actually bought
another quick release plate to put on top of the adapter.
I'll show you quickly what I do. I actually screw the adapter
in the plate here and mount it on top of the tripod,
lock it in, this allows me to take my camera very quickly
off the tripod and I have the same plate on the Ronin so I can just put
my camera on the other plate and I'm done, in literally five seconds.
If you want to check and also buy this plate you can find it of course in
the description tab. To give you a quick comparison, I used to
use the Manfrotto MK Compact Advanced, which is actually a
bit sturdier and and stronger, the legs are exactly the same but it's a
bit heavier as well compared to this tripod. Also the MK
Advanced has the two handles head, which was a bit weird and you cannot really
rotate, tilt and spin around the head as smoothly as with this compact action.
And even though the difference in price wasn't that much,
still this tripod could match all my requirements.
So hope this video helped you in finding out and understanding if this tripod,
the Compact Action by Manfrotto is for you. If it did help you, please consider
to subscribe and also share the video, it might help other friends
and creatives out there. And I shall see you in the next video.
God bless.