A bargain- but gave me nothing but issues since the day I bought it.

For the price I knew I wasn't going to be getting a quality product, I knew there were going to be compromises- but for every day I used the tripod all I could remember were those compromises, not that cheap price I got it for.

So if they say 'buy the best, cry once', the opposite is 'smile when you buy, cry everyday after'

I bought it as I was looking to get into shooting video- I only used it a few times for shooting video and to be honest the pan head was smooth, it's the best part of the tripod and it's not a bad product for video. I have heard that with regular use it will eventually fail, and I can see why because the whole head is basically made from plastic. The 'fluid' adjustment knobs on the side of the head don't really seem to work as advertised either as you have to turn them quite a lot in order to tighten or loosen the head.

There are nice touches to this product, but the whole thing seems to continuously disappoint, I had zero confidence in this product.

I started to use it as a photography tripod, which I realised a job it was not suited to at all. Despite being able to support the weight of a 1 series camera with 70-200 the tripod is incredibly bulky, and quite heavy. The giottos tripod I as my main photography tripod is about half the weight, and much less bulky- the Velbon has really thick legs.

The tripod head is the best part of the tripod, the leg's themselves are sturdy, but too bulky. I appreciate the fact you might use a very heavy broadcast camera on it, but if you're only filming with a 5d2 then you don't need so much support, and for the price you paid for this tripod it would suggest that you're using fairly inexpensive (and therefore lightweight) camera equipment.

2 things that are really annoying about this tripod is that there is a bubble level on top of the tripod, but the head completely obscures it unless you force the head to point straight down- which makes levelling your shots when the camera is attached an absolute pain. Another pain is working on uneven ground as the legs are attached to a central column, so can't be angled independently, a lot of video tripods are like this but it forces you to find flat ground, with a solid photograohy tripod you can put a fluid head on and still get good footage with more versatility.

it's much more expensive but i'd go for a set of gitzo legs and a better fluid head- and you'll have a product to last a lifetime.

But if you're on a budget, then maybe the dv7000 will fit your needs.

specs:
weight 3.4kg
lowest height 61cm
highest height 162cm