Hi, Carl here for ProAV TV.
And today I’m very pleased to be able to show you this surprisingly exciting new tripod
design from Sachtler and Vinten called the Flowtech 75.
They worked together in a partnership on this project as they are now both owned by the
Vitec Group and so were able to work together to fix some of the annoyances of traditional
tripod designs.
Now, you might well ask, why are you getting excited about some tripod legs.
And that would be fair enough, the new Flowtech isn’t about completely reinventing the wheel,
they are still tripod legs after all, they work in the way that every camera operator
is used too.
But the exciting bit is that the designers seem to have sat down, had a discussion about
everything that annoys them about current tripod legs, and then come up with solutions
that actually fix those annoyances rather than just changing them slightly.
And that is what the flowtech seems to be about.
It its core its simply a good pair of sticks, but it tries to fix everything that annoys
us about current tripod legs.
They will simply speed you up and make your life easier while shooting.
So lets first look at what they are like as actual tripod legs.
They have a 75mm bowl on top and the legs have 3 stages which fold up inside one another
so they look like one uninterrupted telescopic leg.
They have a 20 kilogram payload capacity which will be enough for most heads and cameras.
They are made of carbon fibre and weigh 3.5kg, so aren’t too heavy.
Although there are lighter tripods around, as remember that’s just for the legs, you
obviously have to add a head to these to use them.
The minimum height they can go to is 26cm, and max is 153cm.
That’s a good range that covers most shooting heights you would want, and its quick and
easy to move between them because of the new quick release brakes.
So, lets go through these new quick release system in more detail as it’s the most noticeable
and most useful in my opinion of the new additions that’s been made.
They have moved the locks for the legs from the midway point on each leg, up here to the
top near the tripod head.
This is such a better place for them to be.
It means they are here at shooting height.
So you don’t need to bend over to adjust your tripod.
Its surprising how much of a difference this small change makes when your filming, I found
when I was filming with it that I was much more likely to vary the height of my tripod
while shooting than I normally would be.
So that means having to bend over to adjust your tripod is the first annoyance to be ticked
off the list.
The next one is adjusting the angle of the legs.
They solve this by giving you two buttons at the top here.
One to release the leg, and one to lock it when it clicks into a position.
Nice and easy.
The next one is the feet.
I hate the rubber loop on most tripods which you have to physically pull over a hook to
attach the rubber feet.
They take effort to do, and they break easily.
Here you get a nice lever style system which I feel like someone must have done before
because its so simple and effective.
But I don’t think I have seen it on a tripod yet.
And its great!
It makes it very quick and easy to swap from a rubber foot to a spiked one.
Each leg is curved specifically so that they fit together nicely when closed and are comfortable
on your shoulder when carrying them.
Plus there’s magnets which hold the legs together nicely.
When the legs are fully closed they work very well and I couldn’t get them to come apart
no matter how rough I was.
When the legs are extended though they are definitely less effective.
There are so many nice touches with this tripod and I personally really like it.
So I thought it would be interesting to show it to Philip Bloom while we were on a shoot
together.
Now normally Philip is a bit of a miller fan, he’s owned Miller tripods for years and
he also owns several smaller lighter tripods like the E-Image gh06 with solo legs he picked
up from us a month or so ago.
So I thought it would be interesting to share his
thoughts on
it with you.
So that was Philips thoughts on the new Flowtech 75.
But what do you think?
Have they fixed everything that annoys you about current tripod legs?
Or did they miss something off?
Let me know in the comments section below.
Thanks for watching and I’ll see you next time.