I have a problem with stability,
specifically with camera stability. Hey, welcome to another photography product review thing. I'm
Jason and like many people, when you get into photography the tripod is the last thing on your
mind. You're busy researching cameras and lenses and that's where the bulk of your money goes to
and that means that like many people you end up spending a very little amount of money on your
tripod. And this one here could best be described as a budget tripod. It's actually version 3 of
my budget tripods I purchased over the years and for normal photography it does just fine,
but the moment you want to start doing long exposures or stand in front of it and record
or even put a star tracker on there and try to photograph the sky for 60 seconds at a time,
any little bit of wobble from the wind or walking around is going to be picked up by that sensor
and it's going to ruin your shots or make your audience sick. Now sure I could lower the center
tube down and lower the legs down and put weights on it, which is what I've done in the past,
however that is a workaround solution at best. So that brings me to today's product.
This And just what is this? It is the Artcise
AS90C carbon fiber tripod, though it also goes by the RT90C moniker.
It stands 63 inches or 160 centimeters tall when fully extended. Collapsed it shrinks down to 23
inches or 59 centimeters and is capable of laying down to a minuscule 3.75 inches or 8 centimeters.
It weighs 6.3 lbs or 2.8 kgs and supports up to 88 lbs or 40 kgs.
Its legs are made out of 10 layers of carbon fiber and the leg sections range from 40 millimeters
to 29 millimeters in diameter and it comes with a two year warranty.
Now over to the unboxing. It's a professional product because the box tells you so
or maybe the box is professional. Inside this professional box you get a smaller, amateur box
and a very well padded case containing the tripod. There's some obligatory reading material.
It has a side pocket for holding loose change or maybe what's in the amateur box.
And there is the tripod itself which comes with a free pack of stress relief therapy.
And there it is. Look at that girth. Already installed is a mounting pan with attached hook.
Inside the amateur box is a 75 millimeter bowl with adjustable bowl head,
some spiked feet, and an allen wrench.
The tripod's maximum rated weight load is just over 88 pounds.
Now each one of these cinder blocks, paving stones, whatever you want to call them,
it's a solid piece of concrete and they weigh 20 pounds. So there's 20. And there's 40. And
two 20-pound dumbbells.
And supposedly I still have another 8 pounds to go for my camera gear.
It comes with what I would almost consider an overkill bag.
The whole thing is padded. There's a shoulder strap.There's
a velcro closing handle as well as another handle on this end. The whole thing is padded with about
half an inch thick foam and that's really close to the foam thickness that the accessories came in.
There's a zipper on the front, perfect for storing the accessories that come with it
such as the spike feet and obviously the allen keys.
In the top is a little velcro pocket right there
and that's good for storing your extra plate if you want to and then you just close that up there.
Get rid of that.
And yeah, this feels so well protected I wouldn't have a problem tossing this in the back of a truck
or anything like that. As far as the legs are concerned, they are in four different sections
giving you the ability to do one, two, three, four all the way out to its maximum height. Whoops.
These screws feel excellent. They feel very secure when you tighten them down. It would be really
easy to work with with gloves. Speaking of working with gloves, while these pads aren't the thickest,
at least they're here so that's going to let you handle your tripod in the cold and not freeze
your hands quite so quickly and if you want to throw this over your shoulder as you're walking,
it's going to give you a little bit of cushion. Though, like I said, they are pretty thin so
you might end up wanting to cut them off and put some aftermarket ones on instead.
The tripod comes with two different mounting options in the box. The first one is this flat
plate with a hook on it and the second is this bowl plate. I'll show you more about this in
just a moment. The nice thing about this flat plate with the hook directly connected to where
you're mounting your camera is you can hang a weighted sandbag or something right there and
not having a center column. And having your camera connected so close to the weight means that you're
going to get a very sturdy platform because if there's wind or people walking around not
only does it have to shake these sturdy carbon fiber legs it also has to shake the weight of
your camera gear and it has to shake whatever sandbags you put underneath it. Now to change
these plates out it's really simple. There's a tension lever right here.So if we lift that up...
See I can't take it off because fortunately there is a safety lever right here, a safety button, and
if we push that now we can take that out and the reason that safety button is important is because
if i were to pick this up without tensioning that down then there goes my camera without that safety
button. So we've got it pushed all the way in. Just lower that down and it's locked in place.
Now the beauty of a bowl head is the fact that it gives you the option to, in this case I believe,
adjust the level of your camera by up to 17 degrees. That's not a problem usually for most
people if you have a ball head which is going to give you the same ability but if you don't
have a ball head, let's say maybe you have a pivot head or something, trying to get your
camera level for landscape photography or astrophotography can be a real pain in the butt
because if you were to put it on uneven ground then you have to adjust your legs
and get everything lined up here perfectly. So I'm going to simulate that by lowering this
down. Let's pretend that I've just put this down on uneven ground. I don't have a ball
head. Up here I have a camera. All I have to do is loosen this and now I can make it nice and
level and I didn't have to mess around with the legs at all and once you lock that down it is
solidly in place. The other great thing about this bowl head is the fact that if you are doing
astrophotography and you've got your star tracker up here and a telescope or a long telephoto lens
and you get everything just so close but your deep sky object, your galaxy,
that's the size of, you know a tiny little pea in the night sky, so close to being in center,
you know, I know, how frustrating it can be to try to adjust the ball head and not completely
lose focus and lose your object. And so by being able to adjust the entire setup ever so slightly
this makes it so so much easier to keep your deep sky object in the center of your frame.
If it isn't immediately obvious why this one is worth 10 times the amount of this budget one,
well for starters, even the thinnest part of the leg on this tripod is thicker than
the thickest part of the leg on this tripod and when you are working with tripods one of
the first things you learn when extending the legs to reach the ground is you always extend
the top part first because that's the thickest part but it can be a pain in the butt to, you
know, have to lean down and try to adjust these all the time by reaching down. This one however,
the legs are so thick all the way through that i would have no qualms,
you know, extending the bottom part of the leg first and then
adjusting this one as needed to meet the varying levels of terrain.
Another reason is the fact that this one has a center post. Center posts usually are cheaper
because, well you're only making one bit of material to get that extra height whereas
here you have to make it three times to get that extra height. Center posts aren't inherently bad,
in fact you can get an aftermarket center post for this to make it even taller. However,
they do introduce a lot of issues. One is the fact that it's this long skinny pole on top
of a very small frame and obviously they do make more expensive ones with center posts in them but
bear with me here. When you put something heavy on top of it you've got a very heavy weight on a very
small pivot point and you get a lot of shake. Whereas with this guy, you've got the power of
the triangle all the way up to the top The other thing is that this one here is, well, it's not
quite my height. I'm 6 ft tall and while this one is pretty close, I didn't extend that all the way,
while this is pretty close it does require just a bit of a hunch and if you're trying
to photograph birds or wait for the proper thing to come into frame sitting there being ready or
following subjects for 45 minutes at a time, that little bit of a hunch can get tiring. Whereas with
this puppy, you can see that once I put the ball head on top of it it's actually too tall
for me and so I'd have to lower it down. But that would actually let me stand perfectly straight and
comfortable. I could do that more or less as long as I can stand in place and because it's
so sturdy, you know, you can even lean on it a little bit and that just adds to the stability.
Another problem with having a center post is if you want to get low,
well you are limited by the height of that center post. Even though your legs can go out further,
you can't go any lower than that and if you're trying to take photos of birds on the shore or
small critters like rabbits or something like that, being able to get down flat on the ground
is going to give you a much more pleasing shot than looking top down a little bit from
that angle. Whereas with this one, we can take it all the way down. It comes with very robust
replaceable foot spikes so... They stay on there very well. You just unscrew the padded foot, screw
on the spike, take the included allen wrench, and give that a little lock to put those on.
The threading on the plate is reversible. So this is the quarter inch screw but if
you need a 3/8 well you simply take your little allen wrench,
put it in this hole right here, it's just a little locking screw,
and loosen that just a bit. That's going to loosen up the hook and you can unscrew the hook.
Push this thread out and there you can see. 1/4 inch, 3/8. Flip it over, push it back in,
screw your hook back on,
and then come and lock this down again so the hook doesn't move. If you're saying to yourself 'oh my
gosh, I'm so going to unscrew that and lose it', Well they have you covered with two extra locking
screws. So if you lose the main one you can just, you have two more tries not to lose them.
Here's the feature-proofing part of the video where I say that if in the future while using
this I run into any problems or need to tell you about anything else that I missed
I will update the video description down below under a big post that says update
and if it is such a problem that I need to create a new video about it I will have that
card linking to that video popping up right now. So that is the Artcise carbon fiber tripod.
If you are interested in picking one up I'd appreciate it if you use my affiliate link
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