Retail prices:
Feisol 3442: $420
Sirui K-30X: $160
Leofoto LS-284C: $232
RRS BH-30 LR: $295
Weights:
Feisol 3442 and Sirui K-30X: 1646 g
Leofoto LS-284C and RRS BH-30 LR: 1431 g
Height difference at clamp: 215mm (Feisol setup taller)
Leofoto leg angles (as measured by me): 22˚, 55˚, 85˚
Feisol leg angles (as measured by me): 21˚, 46˚, 71˚
I’ve been using the Feisol 3442 and Sirui K-30X combination as my only tripod for about 4 years now. It’s been all over the world and has never let me down, but I was looking for something a little different. I spend a lot of the time hiking with my tripod, so I wanted something a little lighter and more compact. The Feisol isn’t particularly light when you’re looking at a long day with it on your backpack, and it’s quite large which makes it hang farther off the side, upsetting the weight balance and making it seem larger than it is. This lead me to the Leofoto LS-284C.
There’s no way to avoid the simple fact that the Leofoto LS-284C is a blatant copy of the Really Right Stuff TFC-14. The few crucial differences that I can tell are that the leg angles are a little steeper and the leg extension locks don’t feel as nice to use on the Leofoto. But the price is where things get interesting. The Leofoto typically costs (at the time of writing) $232, where as the RRS TFC-14 costs $835, well outside my budget.
This comparison between the Feisol 3442 and Sirui K-30X combination and the Leofoto LS-284C and RRS BH-30 LR combination is an apt one because in addition to both being fairly light, versatile tripods, they occupy a very similar price bracket. The Feisol/Sirui setup has a retail price of $580 and the Leofoto/RRS setup has a retail price of $527.
Disclaimer: I purchased the Feisol tripod new at full retail price about 4 years ago. I purchased the Sirui ballhead new with a discount at the same time. I purchased the Leofoto at retail price from eBay, shipped direct from China a couple of months ago. The RRS ballhead was purchased used at a significant discount at a similar time.
2019,03,13-CRD_5365 by Callum Douglass, on Flickr
2019,03,13-CRD_5366 by Callum Douglass, on FlickrThe Ballheads
The Sirui K-30X Ballhead is a very good model and one that I largely recommend. It moves fairly smoothly, locks down well, and has very few downsides. It isn’t perfect, though. The panning lock gets a little notchy when close to lockup and the ball could move a little smoother when under moderate tension. But there’s relatively little shift when locking the ball down and the panning base is extremely smooth when the lock knob is loosened sufficiently. My only large complaint is one that’s fairly easily rectified: I strongly disliked the included clamp.
The clamp that comes with the K-30X is not one that I can recommend. I found it to be rather large, the knob stiff, the lead screw too slow, the rubber cheap feeling, and the push-button safety unnecessarily fiddly. I only used it for a day or two before switching it with a different one from my stash of clamps. The clamp I ended up using long term with the K-30X was an old unlabeled Induro model from a damaged ballhead.
ASIDE: removal of the stock Sirui clamp is not trivial. The screw is a custom sized countersunk M8 machine screw, not the more common M6 or 1/4”-20. Worse yet, it’s epoxied in place. Even with a high quality Wiha hex key, the very soft stainless steel screw stripped before I got it out. I had to use a Dremel to carve a slot into the head of the screw and use a large flat bladed screwdriver with a wrench to remove it. I would highly recommend using either heat on the ballhead shaft or a solvent (acetone would be my suggestion) to soften the epoxy before attempting removal. After all this, I had to machine the head of a new M8 screw down to size to fit the clamp as the recess for the head is smaller than the standard M8 size.
My plan was to sell my Feisol/Sirui tripod and head combo to fund this transition, so by choosing a set of legs quite a bit less expensive than my old ones, I was able to talk myself into buying a very nice ballhead. I chose the Really Right Stuff BH-30 with the compact lever release clamp. Not only was it considerably lighter than the K-30X, but it’s more compact, faster to use, and locks down extremely firmly. I absolutely love the lever release clamp. It’s fast, solid, low profile, and works with all my plates (from many different manufacturers, none of whom are RRS).
So far, the only gripe I have with it is the amount of slop in the indexable locking lever. It’s designed so that you can pull it out and rotate it to a different position in 60˚ increments to avoid it fouling on your tripod apex or arca clamp. But there’s a ton of slop in the machining of it. This results in a very large and highly noticeable 9˚ of motion when you change directions (i.e. going from tightening to loosening the ballhead). This seems like a gross oversight to me as the solution is to simply decrease the clearance between the male hex on the ballhead side and the machined female hex on the lever side or alternitively use a set of interlocking splines. The Paragon Machine Works through-axle on my mountain bike (a ~$35 part) uses a very similar system for indexing the handle, but did it properly, with 22 indexable positions and less than a degree of slop in the mechanism. If RRS had done something more like this, which would seem more in line with the $295 price of this ballhead, I would be far happier with the locking lever and the ballhead as a whole.
The Legs
As for the legs, the Feisol 3442 tripod served me very well. The reverse folding feature is useful when traveling, assuming your ballhead and clamp don’t interfere with the legs. That being said, the platform is very large and the legs mount to the outside of it, so this tripod is very broad. The volume of the folded tripod is very large no matter how you fold it. I find this less than ideal when it’s hanging off the side of my pack.
This tripod has leg angles of 21˚, 46˚, 71˚, and completely reverse folding. I measured the primary leg angle stop to be 21˚, less than ideal in my opinion. I’d have much preferred 24˚ or 25˚. Increasing the leg angle from 21˚ to 25˚ would only decrease the maximum height by about 3%, a worthy compromise in my opinion. This 71˚ lowest setting doesn’t allow the tripod to get all the way to the ground, but you can unlock the legs and put the platform on the ground. This isn’t ideal as the legs aren’t locked and as such can’t prevent the platform and head from moving, but it has worked for me on occasion.
The leg extension locks are excellent on this tripod. It takes a small rotation to lock and release tension, and they lock very solidly, enough for me to hang my body weight from the tripod. I would rate the feel of the leg locks as extremely good, among the best I’ve used. The feet on this tripod are small hard rubber caps glued onto the end of the legs. They are not replaceable, not large, and not soft and grippy. I would have preferred larger rubber feet and the option to use spikes.
The Leofoto LS-284C is a much more compact tripod. It is a few inches shorter when folded but most strikingly it is vastly less voluminous when folded, with almost no enclosed volume between the legs. The legs don’t invert, so the overall length including ballhead will be slightly longer than an inverted Feisol 3442, but it’s still short enough for me.
I measured the primary leg angle stop to be 22˚, a little less than ideal, in my opinion. I’d have much preferred 24˚ or 25˚. Increasing the leg angle from 22˚ to 25˚ would only decrease the maximum height by about 2%, a worthy compromise in my opinion. The final leg angle stop on this tripod is 85˚, which is ideal for getting the tripod very low to the ground. The base of the platform is only a couple of inches above the ground.
The leg angle locks on this tripod are a very smart design. You pull them all the way out when the tripod is folded up, and then open the legs all the way to the 85˚ stop. This releases a spring behind the locks so that when you then close the legs, the locks ratchet in to each successive stop. I find this to be a very efficient way to adjust the leg angles. The locks can also be pushed in without opening the legs fully, if you only want to adjust the legs by a single stop.
The leg extension locks are not the best that I’ve used. They lock extremely strongly (I can hang my body from the tripod) but have a rather poor feel. They lock down smoothly enough, but when unlocking the are two points of resistance. First, the lock feels like its releasing, but then goes loose without the leg unlocking, and only when turning past this second point of resistance is the leg unlocked. I’ve never used a tripod with leg locks that have this feel. The feet on these legs are replaceable, but I’m quite satisfied with the large, round feet that come standard. Also included are some short steel spikes, but they are small enough to be largely ineffective at only ~20 mm in length. I would have much preferred a longer set of spikes in the ~40 mm range. I may end up making myself a set at some point, but that's a project for another day.
My biggest complaint with this tripod is the overall height. At full extension, the Leofoto LS-284C with RRS BH-30 head is 215 mm shorter than the Feisol 3442 with Sirui K-30X head. I’ve decided that I can live with this for the kind of photography that I’m doing, but it’s not ideal. If I had my way, each of the four leg sections would be 40 mm (about 1.5”) longer, making the extended legs 160 mm longer and the total height 150 mm taller, at the cost of the collapsed tripod being 40 mm longer. The weight difference would be quite minimal and I would find the added height a great improvement.
In conclusion, I can highly recommend either setup without significant reservations. Neither tripod is perfect, but they both offer a good feature set with a different set of compromises. For my uses, the Leofoto and RRS combination is a better choice, but you may feel differently.
(Pictures are in the next post)
