Velbon Sherpa 750R Tripod Review
Velbon Sherpa 750R Tripod in use at the Tindale Tarn viewing screen...plus a few defects.
I initially wrote this review for Amazon as I bought my third 750R through them, but as usual they didn't publish it. So I thought I'd publish it myself here, in a slightly expanded form, along with the above composite photo.
The tripod specification can be found here . This link includes a few images illustrating its versatility.
I bought my first Velbon Sherpa 750R tripod in November 2006 (from Hilton Photographic, priced £88), my second in February 2010 (from Briston Cameras, priced £90), and my third In June 2011 (via Amazon, priced £80). The only difference is that this last one didn't come with a carry case, which I never wanted anyway. It's been used mainly for digiscoping with my 80mm Opticron scope and compact digital camera, which together weigh about 2kg - well within the 4kg load specification. The fact that I'm on my third one in about five years indicates that they're not particularly reliable when subject to hard use.
The first trivial problem I encountered is when I lost one of the rubber feet after using the tripod on a muddy shore. To be fair, I contacted the manufacturer and they sent me a replacement free of charge. Over the next few years I lost five of the six feet on my first two tripods under similar circumstances, and soon stopped bothering about them, just taping over the ends of the legs to avoid trapping mud (see photo, top right). A more serious problem is that after a few months of use, I found it progressively more difficult to lock the tripod head at a steep angle (eg when attempting to photograph birds perched in trees). To be fair again, I think it's probably asking a bit much of the relatively cheap tripod head to cope with a heavy-weight scope used in this way, but I think this should be spelled out in the specification.
As I couldn't find anything better on the market for my purposes, I eventually bought a second one; but within a few months one of the plastic lever-type locks on one of the legs snapped off (see photo, middle right). In theory I could of course have sent the unit back for repair, as there's a two-year guarantee, but as I didn't want it to be out of service for any length of time, I just swapped the damaged leg with one from my old tripod. But within six months the same thing had happened to the other two legs, and so I had to replace those as well. If that wasn't bad enough, after about 15 months some sort of lubrication problem seemed to develop making it impossible to rotate the scope smoothly in the horizontal plane. So I replaced the head as well, meaning that I was now virtually back to using my original tripod...and so I bought another one.
I've been using my third 750R for about six months now, and all was going well till a few weeks ago when the plastic latch that secures the quick release plate to the tripod head sheared (see photo, bottom right). Again, rather than sending it back for repair, I just replaced the latch with a spare from one of my old units.
Other than these reliability issues, I've found the tripod to be fit-for-purpose for the vast majority of applications. Additionally, I often walk long distances when out digiscoping, and so although I need something fairly sturdy to support an 80mm scope I don't want anything too heavy: the 750R is just about the ideal weight. Also, I don't like to advertise the fact that I'm carrying optical equipment, and as the tripod packs down to 55cm it can easily be carried along with my scope in an averaged-sized rucksack.
My only substantial operational gripe is that there are no fine controls on the tripod head, which makes it difficult to get the framing right when viewing images at very high magnifications (for all I know, this comment might apply to other, more expensive models as well). Although this isn't generally important for stills photography, as the resulting photos can easily be cropped, it can be crucial when shooting video: on some occasions it's taken me several minutes of fiddling about with the crude locking mechanism before I've been able to centre an image in the camera frame - and birds don't always hang around that long!
In my original Amazon review, which I wrote several months ago, I gave this product a three-star rating (out of five). Despite my subsequent experience with the sheared latch, I'd probably stick with that assessment, taking everything into consideration. (See subsequent updates.)
18 November 2011
Update 28 April 12: The replacement latch, which I'd taken from my second tripod, sheared today; also one of the leg locks will now only half close - although it currently still performs its function. I'm beginning to think that my three-star rating was far too generous!
Update 18 June 12: Yet another of the leg locks sheared today - this is in addition to the one that will not fully close. I've therefore now experienced five failures on the nine legs from my three tripods! In view of this - and the second latch problem reported above - I'd now give this product a ONE STAR rating on the Amazon system, largely in view of its appalling reliability record.
Update 9 January 13. Following a further failure today (panning action jammed) I thought it might be useful to list all the faults experienced on my three Velbon Sherpa 750R Tripods over a period of about six years:
RUBBER FEET: Nine out of nine lost.
LEG LOCKS: Five out of nine legs rendered useless due to sheared latches.
QUICK-RELEASE PLATE LATCH: Two out of three sheared.
TRIPOD HEAD PANNING ACTION: Jammed on two out of three units (An attempt to fix the most recent failure in-the-field resulted in the bolt connecting the tripod head to the leg unit shearing).
After this last failure I finally gave up on the 750R and instead bought a Manfrotto 190CXPRO4 Carbon Fibre Tripod with 804RC2 head. See photo in my Digiscoping (Equipment etc) Flickr set for details.
Note added 20 February 13: Although I'm now happily using Manfrotto kit for my digiscoping, I thought I'd see if it would be possible to replace some of the sheared leg locks so that I could use the Velon 750R as a backup tripod. I emailed Velbon about this, and after sending them a photo of the affected part I was sent two replacement latches free of charge. Unfortunately there was no instruction provided as to how to carry out the repair. It would appear that a special tool is required in order to remove the pin that acts as a hinge for the latch (I tried tapping it out, but without success). If anyone is thinking about buying a 750R it might be worth finding out about this beforehand.
Velbon Sherpa 750R Tripod Review
Velbon Sherpa 750R Tripod in use at the Tindale Tarn viewing screen...plus a few defects.
I initially wrote this review for Amazon as I bought my third 750R through them, but as usual they didn't publish it. So I thought I'd publish it myself here, in a slightly expanded form, along with the above composite photo.
The tripod specification can be found here . This link includes a few images illustrating its versatility.
I bought my first Velbon Sherpa 750R tripod in November 2006 (from Hilton Photographic, priced £88), my second in February 2010 (from Briston Cameras, priced £90), and my third In June 2011 (via Amazon, priced £80). The only difference is that this last one didn't come with a carry case, which I never wanted anyway. It's been used mainly for digiscoping with my 80mm Opticron scope and compact digital camera, which together weigh about 2kg - well within the 4kg load specification. The fact that I'm on my third one in about five years indicates that they're not particularly reliable when subject to hard use.
The first trivial problem I encountered is when I lost one of the rubber feet after using the tripod on a muddy shore. To be fair, I contacted the manufacturer and they sent me a replacement free of charge. Over the next few years I lost five of the six feet on my first two tripods under similar circumstances, and soon stopped bothering about them, just taping over the ends of the legs to avoid trapping mud (see photo, top right). A more serious problem is that after a few months of use, I found it progressively more difficult to lock the tripod head at a steep angle (eg when attempting to photograph birds perched in trees). To be fair again, I think it's probably asking a bit much of the relatively cheap tripod head to cope with a heavy-weight scope used in this way, but I think this should be spelled out in the specification.
As I couldn't find anything better on the market for my purposes, I eventually bought a second one; but within a few months one of the plastic lever-type locks on one of the legs snapped off (see photo, middle right). In theory I could of course have sent the unit back for repair, as there's a two-year guarantee, but as I didn't want it to be out of service for any length of time, I just swapped the damaged leg with one from my old tripod. But within six months the same thing had happened to the other two legs, and so I had to replace those as well. If that wasn't bad enough, after about 15 months some sort of lubrication problem seemed to develop making it impossible to rotate the scope smoothly in the horizontal plane. So I replaced the head as well, meaning that I was now virtually back to using my original tripod...and so I bought another one.
I've been using my third 750R for about six months now, and all was going well till a few weeks ago when the plastic latch that secures the quick release plate to the tripod head sheared (see photo, bottom right). Again, rather than sending it back for repair, I just replaced the latch with a spare from one of my old units.
Other than these reliability issues, I've found the tripod to be fit-for-purpose for the vast majority of applications. Additionally, I often walk long distances when out digiscoping, and so although I need something fairly sturdy to support an 80mm scope I don't want anything too heavy: the 750R is just about the ideal weight. Also, I don't like to advertise the fact that I'm carrying optical equipment, and as the tripod packs down to 55cm it can easily be carried along with my scope in an averaged-sized rucksack.
My only substantial operational gripe is that there are no fine controls on the tripod head, which makes it difficult to get the framing right when viewing images at very high magnifications (for all I know, this comment might apply to other, more expensive models as well). Although this isn't generally important for stills photography, as the resulting photos can easily be cropped, it can be crucial when shooting video: on some occasions it's taken me several minutes of fiddling about with the crude locking mechanism before I've been able to centre an image in the camera frame - and birds don't always hang around that long!
In my original Amazon review, which I wrote several months ago, I gave this product a three-star rating (out of five). Despite my subsequent experience with the sheared latch, I'd probably stick with that assessment, taking everything into consideration. (See subsequent updates.)
18 November 2011
Update 28 April 12: The replacement latch, which I'd taken from my second tripod, sheared today; also one of the leg locks will now only half close - although it currently still performs its function. I'm beginning to think that my three-star rating was far too generous!
Update 18 June 12: Yet another of the leg locks sheared today - this is in addition to the one that will not fully close. I've therefore now experienced five failures on the nine legs from my three tripods! In view of this - and the second latch problem reported above - I'd now give this product a ONE STAR rating on the Amazon system, largely in view of its appalling reliability record.
Update 9 January 13. Following a further failure today (panning action jammed) I thought it might be useful to list all the faults experienced on my three Velbon Sherpa 750R Tripods over a period of about six years:
RUBBER FEET: Nine out of nine lost.
LEG LOCKS: Five out of nine legs rendered useless due to sheared latches.
QUICK-RELEASE PLATE LATCH: Two out of three sheared.
TRIPOD HEAD PANNING ACTION: Jammed on two out of three units (An attempt to fix the most recent failure in-the-field resulted in the bolt connecting the tripod head to the leg unit shearing).
After this last failure I finally gave up on the 750R and instead bought a Manfrotto 190CXPRO4 Carbon Fibre Tripod with 804RC2 head. See photo in my Digiscoping (Equipment etc) Flickr set for details.
Note added 20 February 13: Although I'm now happily using Manfrotto kit for my digiscoping, I thought I'd see if it would be possible to replace some of the sheared leg locks so that I could use the Velon 750R as a backup tripod. I emailed Velbon about this, and after sending them a photo of the affected part I was sent two replacement latches free of charge. Unfortunately there was no instruction provided as to how to carry out the repair. It would appear that a special tool is required in order to remove the pin that acts as a hinge for the latch (I tried tapping it out, but without success). If anyone is thinking about buying a 750R it might be worth finding out about this beforehand.