I had to do emergency surgery on the ball head mount area of my Rollei Tribute TL0613 today after just 8 months of use. Which doesn’t seem like a terribly long time in my book.
Before you ask about guarantees / warrantees etc, yes the store I bought it from does give me a 1 year guarantee. And yes I still have the receipt. But I bought it in Hong Kong and frankly the flight would cost more than what I paid for the tripod (HK$2350 / US$300)
Now I’ll admit this tripod goes in suitcases when I travel with it and it gets lugged about on the side of my backpack. But it’s probably not been used more than 40 times. Really not a lot when you think about it.
More recently I had been noticing the head mount area was becoming a bit loose. Barely noticeable until I was trying to move my camera in tiny increments. Nothing to write home about, but today it decided to detach itself.
So some model makers super glue and green stuff was used as emergency tools to get it back together and althought it might not look pretty it does feel a lot more steady. For now…
It’s a shame really because unti this I would have genuinely recommended this to anyone who looking for a travel tripod. Hands down. It’s super light thanks to being built from carbon fiber, it packs up really small and it has padding on the legs which is an excellent addition. But this has now got me concerned big time.
I think I will have to start looking for a replacement travel tripod when I go to Photoshop World 2013 in Orlando next week. I’m looking at you Really Right Stuff… 