Yesterday I anxiously awaited the arrival of our postal carrier and our new Feisol carbon fiber tripods. I placed the order Thursday and Kerry @ Really Big Cameras promptly shipped them out (less than an hour later!). Great service there. The post office was running late Saturday - doesn't that always seem to be the case when you are waiting on new photo gear? Anyway, they finally showed up and I got my hands on our CT-3441S and CT-3441T tripods. I wanted a tripod I could hike & travel with that wasn't too short and had to be pretty sturdy. I'm 5'-8" and had some past back injuries that make it painful to stoop over a short tripod. That's why I decided on the CT-3441T. My wife is just getting into photography (yay - another addict in the house!) and I wanted to get something light for her that suits her 5'-2" height. The CT-3441S seemed like a perfect choice. And, since she is Taiwanese she pretty much insisted we buy a Taiwan product.
After getting them out of their padded cases we were both immediately impressed with their light weight and compact size. Compared to the Slik Pro 700DX that I used to lug around, these things seem almost weightless.
As you can see in the above image, the Slik dwarfs the Feisols. And you can see the difference in length between the 3441S and 3441T with the legs wrapped around backwards.
Fully extended, the two Feisols seem as if they were made just for my wife and I. The 3441T is perfect for my height and the 3441S is perfect for my wife. With the ballheads mounted, my viewfinder is exactly at my eye level without the center column extended at all. Same goes for my wife.
I love it - I don't have to bend at all. And with my 5DMKII and my heaviest lens mounted, the feel of the tripod is extremely solid. Vibrations are dampened quickly (pretty much instantly). The legs are very easy to operate with the anti-rotation feature. One day I will upgrade our ballheads to something better - probably the Photoclam series. For now I am thrilled with my new setup and feel like I could carry this around all day without a problem. We'll give these a tough workout at the end of the year when we spend 3 weeks in Taiwan. In between now and then we will get some good use of these in the north Georgia mountains.
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