I posted on here when I was looking to upgrade from my Dolica CF tripod and ballhead to something a bit more high end. I was pointed to Kerry from Reallybigcameras and also to the Benro C-2680T. Wanting to save some money, I found the Benro C-2680T on ebay from sub $300 and jumped at the deal. However, when I received it I was a little disappointed at its small height. It was about equal to my Dolica height wise. On the bright side the twist locks were fantastic and it folded up VERY small (17").
However, as all things in photography go, that little height detail bothered me. So I started looking into competitive offerings from other companies. Pretty soon I arrived at the Photoclam PT224 CF tripod. No reviews had really been done of it yet except for a random video circulating the net showing a asian man dangling from the tripod to show its load bearing capacity. From the stats posted online, he height looked perfect, adding about 4-5" onto my Benro's height while only increasing the folded length a little under 2". As you can see in the image below this put my 7D just about at perfect eye height for me (right around 5'10"-5'11"). Note that one of the tables created to compare the Photoclam Tripod line inaccurately puts the folded height of this tripod right around 15.6". The correct folded height is 18.9" which is much more realistic for a 4 section tripod of this height.
The tripod is well made. The CF tubes are a bit tighter fit than the Benro making extending the lens take a little more effort. The Benro legs can almost be pulled down by gravity when loosened a quarter turn. The Photoclam have to be pulled. Take that as a pro or con depending on if you feel this means a more rigid final product or not. Both the Benro and Photoclam CF seems to be of equal thickness and both feature the largest leg diameter of 28mm. All the legs on the Photoclam do not rotate, the Benro does not rotate except for the last tube. Both have center columns that do not rotate.
The feet are standard rubber. The rubber feet can be removed to expose some nice chrome spikes underneath. The rubber is fairly hard to remove as it is very tight.
Some of you might have seen my post about a slight manufacturing defect in the twist locks. One twist lock was put on a bit crooked resulting in the leg splaying out of line a bit when extended. I assume this is a rare defect and Kerry is currently working on getting me a replacement tube to fix this issue.
The tripod comes with a ground level set that allows you to remove the center column either for weight savings or to get the tripod very low to the ground. I have not tried to use this feature but it has previously been reviewed in another members PT124 review. The tripod also has a spring loaded weight hook which retracts into the tripod body when not in use.
The angle locks on the legs are self-locking. What I mean by that is they automatically snap to the next higher angle when unfolding the tripod. This makes setup a bit quicker as you don't have to pull out three stoppers and then push them back in. The Benro and my old Dolica both use the latter system.
Finally we have the ballhead. Photoclam is probably best known on these boards for their ballheads. I haven't seen much in the way of reviews on the Pro Gold II line. I haven't used competing products so take my review for what it is. The ballhead comes in a nice case that has a very nice suede pouch for storage if you should choose to use it. From what I have seen its similar to the RRS bag and isn't merely meant to keep the ballhead scratch free in shipping.
The ballhead itself is a nice black matte finish. There is nice easy-to-grip surface on both the panning screw and the locking screw. The panning base also has some knurling allowing a better grip for tightening. The ballhead is accented with a bit of gold bling to let you know you spent a boatload of money.
The locking knob has a minimum friction setting inset into the knob. Its definitely nice to have this feature. My Dolica ballhead had this but it was its own knob and was always loosening on its own. The photoclam is designed to be hard to turn so it stays exactly where you set it.
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