**Peak Design Travel Tripod Review**

This tripod is specifically designed for travel, and it shows in its thoughtful design and features. One of the standout features of this tripod is its ability to easily go from a compact size to a full five-foot height, making it versatile and flexible. The counterweight hook on the bottom of the center column is another feature that sets it apart from other tripods. Typically used in windy conditions, it can be released and repositioned to invert the center column for low-angle shots.

**Ease of Use**

The ease of use is another area where this tripod excels. The ball head itself has a level on it, which makes it easy to get straight shots. If you want to adjust the position slightly, there's a dial that can be adjusted to lock down into place. Additionally, the center column has a smartphone tripod adapter that comes with it, making it easy to whip out your phone and take shots on the go. This adapter is magnetic, which prevents parts from falling off and getting lost.

**Hex Keys**

The set of hex keys that come with this tripod are handy for several things. You'll need one to tighten the mounting plate when attaching it to the camera, and a smaller key can be used to adjust the tension on the cam levers for the leg releases. This allows you to customize the tripod to your liking.

**Portability**

One of the unique features of this tripod is its ability to carry it around with ease. There are two anchor points on the tripod that allow it to use Peak Design's anchor strap system, making it portable and convenient to take on the go.

**Ecosystem**

Peak Design has thoughtfully built an ecosystem around their products, including this tripod. The tripod mounting plates are compatible with Arca-Swiss systems, giving you options when choosing where to mount your gear. Additionally, using a Peak Design strap with this tripod allows for easy integration into the Peak Design system.

**Giving Back**

The launch of this tripod is also noteworthy, as it's been made with a social conscience in mind. From April 7th to April 10th, all profits from every tripod sold will be donated to support COVID-19 disaster relief and combating climate change. This initiative demonstrates Peak Design's commitment to giving back to the community.

**Conclusion**

Overall, this tripod is well-designed and thoughtfully built. Its compact size and lightweight design make it perfect for travel, while its full range of features makes it suitable for a variety of shooting applications. The addition of a smartphone adapter, hex keys, and anchor points make it easy to use and customize to your needs. Additionally, the ecosystem around Peak Design products allows for seamless integration with other gear. Whether you're a photographer or videographer, this tripod is definitely worth considering.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is the new peak design travel tripod you guys might remember last year when this went up is a Kickstarter project well it's finally finished and finally available in fact over the next four days this is really pretty interesting peak design told me that starting today April 7th all the way through April 10th through the end of the day 100% of the profits from this tripod are going to go back into the community into Cova 19 as well as climate change disaster relief program so I'll talk more about that in a second but this is a really good time to check out a cool tripod and do some good design actually sent me one of these and so I want to share this with you guys in this video and talk about some of the cool new features I think I probably speak for a lot of photographers when I say I am really picky when it comes to travel tripods if you follow me on this channel you probably know that I travel a lot I'm not traveling at all right now for obvious reasons but normally I do a lot of traveling and tripods are typically a point of contention for me and it always seems like there's some sacrifice that you have to make when you're buying a tripod that's specific to travel so it's either you're gonna get a cheaper price but it's a little bit flimsy you don't get the durability or it actually is compact and lightweight but it doesn't seem to have the features or the flexibility you have to give something up that you would have on a larger tripod just to travel with something now if there's anyone out there that can rethink the tripod design it would be piqued design and I think they've done a really exceptional job with this one and this video is sponsored by peak design so it's not really a review per se but I do want to highlight some of the features and go through some of the stuff that's on here because I think it really is impressive and they've done a really nice job with this so let's dig in and get right to it first of all this tripod comes in two different options you can get it in aluminum or carbon fiber I really recommend carbon fiber if you're going to be traveling a lot with this now carbon fiber as with any tripod will run you a little bit extra money but trust me it really is worth it in the long run if you're really going to be doing a heavy use the first significant feature that you're gonna notice on this is the actual design now as peek says they've utilized a new architecture that eliminates wasted space so you're gonna notice that the columns on this are not round this is going to allow for a much smaller fold down from traditional tripods and the result is going to be a collapsed tripod that's about the diameter of a water bottle that's something that fits really easy into a suitcase or even the side bag pocket the legs are designed in five sections and each of them deploy with quick-release cam levers so you can have a tripod fully deployed and ready to shoot in they say under 10 seconds or at least that's their office record over at peak design either way it's really fast and easy to set up so the standard configuration is that this comes with Peaks compact ball head that uses Peaks own mounting plates now there is a separate kit that you can get that has a ball head in it this is the default one I think it's actually really good the plates are interesting too and if you've ever had something like the camera clip you know what these are these are super low profile if you need them to live on your camera for a while they're not big and clunky like plates are from some other manufacturers it's also worth noting that they are arca-swiss compatible now want to note here that there really isn't a standard for arca-swiss in fact sometimes you can get arca-swiss plates that are different sizes and they don't fit in what you're trying to mount them on but this will fit in most of the ones that I've used in my studio and I think it's a nice touch that they did not decide to make that proprietary the ball head has a quick release for the mounting plates as well as a lock so to release it what you want to do is just make sure the collar is in the unlocked position and then simply press the release tab it comes right off of course when you have your camera ready to mount it's just going to lock into place when you set it on in the ball head for extra stability just turn the collar into the lock position now I am a big fan of simplicity in design because the last thing you want to be doing when you're out in the field trying to get a shot is fiddling with things trying to get this into position everything on here is a real simple layout and couldn't be easier to use so to raise the center column all you're going to do is take the knob on the side you can pull it out so you're not pinching yourself and simply turn it to unlock it you can raise the center column and then you turn that to lock it down super easy when you want to adjust the articulation of the ball head right under the lock dial there's a secondary dial I'm just going to turn that to unlock the entire ball head and you simply turn this into position if I want to go a little bit to the side if I want to go into portrait it's going to kind of lock down into that position if I want to level this off you have two options there is a level on the ball head itself the other thing you can do to reposition this is just grab the center column lower it and the design is such that this just gonna lock it back into place I can lock that dial down once again then I bring it up and I'm even steven not sure who Stephen is but it's really easy to use another standard feature that I think got a really unique redesign is the way that the counterweight hook works on the bottom of the center column so typically you would use this if you're shooting in windy conditions you can put a counterweight such as your backpack or something on here and it will steady the tripod even further so the other thing you can do is release this hook if you want to invert the center column for a really low angle shot the way you're gonna do this is if you look on the hook itself you're gonna realize there are two pieces that mount this to the center column what you want to do is take the bottom of the two pieces one with the air on it pull that down and then simply twist to unlock and this makes the hook come off also you're gonna notice that there is a smartphone tripod adapter that is included inside the center column all these parts are magnetic that's hard to see in the video but it makes it so they don't just fall out and you lose things but this is really cool because if you want to just whip out your phone to get a shot on the tripod you've got eight an adapter with you you can simply put that on your smartphone and then you don't even need the mounting plate this is just the same spec as the mounting plate put it right into the ball head and you're ready to go also included is the set of hex keys which come in handy for a couple different things first of all you're going to need a hex key for tightening the mounting plate when you're attaching that to the camera and the smaller hex key can be used to adjust the tension on the cam levers for the leg releases so if you want them a little tighter or a little bit looser you can adjust those according to taste so once again a very well thought out and finally we have two anchor points on the tripod these are for using peak designs anchor strap system that makes the tripod even more portable so these are the same ones that you use with any peak design strap typically they go on strap lugs on the camera but they can attach to these anchor points and then you can take this on the go with a camera strap so another way to carry there are three things that I think make this a very unique tripod first of all peak today wonderful job of thinking this through and what you have is a tripod that is specifically designed for travel it is compact its lightweight and it's full-featured so you don't have any of the weird trade-offs I talked about before where you might have a lightweight tripod but you're missing something everything is here the second thing I love is is fast and easy to deploy in fact another feature I didn't think about earlier is the height on this I don't think I mentioned it goes from this size into a full five-foot tripod so you get a lot of height and a lot of flexibility with this and then the third thing that I really love the P kept done on this and I think this speaks more to peak design overall than it does just to this tripod but I like how they're building an ecosystem and earlier I talked about the fact that this ecosystem isn't always proprietary which i think is very important too so you have tripod mounting plates that are arca-swiss compatible for instance so you have options on that but if you are buying him to the peak design system for instance the anchor points and being able to use a peak design strap with this you can kind of plug and play and mix and match things and I think that's a really good way to go and its really well-thought-out another thing that I want to say about the launch of this tripod so from today which is April 7th all the way to April 10th that's four days 100% of the profits from every tripod sold so no matter where you get it they're gonna be donated to supporting kovat 19 disaster relief as well as combating climate change this launch is going to enable peak design to basically keep its global contractors and partners gainfully employed while addressing not one but two global disasters I'll put a link in the show description if you want more information I would love to hear from you so drop me a comment as well I'll catch you guys in the next video until then laterthis is the new peak design travel tripod you guys might remember last year when this went up is a Kickstarter project well it's finally finished and finally available in fact over the next four days this is really pretty interesting peak design told me that starting today April 7th all the way through April 10th through the end of the day 100% of the profits from this tripod are going to go back into the community into Cova 19 as well as climate change disaster relief program so I'll talk more about that in a second but this is a really good time to check out a cool tripod and do some good design actually sent me one of these and so I want to share this with you guys in this video and talk about some of the cool new features I think I probably speak for a lot of photographers when I say I am really picky when it comes to travel tripods if you follow me on this channel you probably know that I travel a lot I'm not traveling at all right now for obvious reasons but normally I do a lot of traveling and tripods are typically a point of contention for me and it always seems like there's some sacrifice that you have to make when you're buying a tripod that's specific to travel so it's either you're gonna get a cheaper price but it's a little bit flimsy you don't get the durability or it actually is compact and lightweight but it doesn't seem to have the features or the flexibility you have to give something up that you would have on a larger tripod just to travel with something now if there's anyone out there that can rethink the tripod design it would be piqued design and I think they've done a really exceptional job with this one and this video is sponsored by peak design so it's not really a review per se but I do want to highlight some of the features and go through some of the stuff that's on here because I think it really is impressive and they've done a really nice job with this so let's dig in and get right to it first of all this tripod comes in two different options you can get it in aluminum or carbon fiber I really recommend carbon fiber if you're going to be traveling a lot with this now carbon fiber as with any tripod will run you a little bit extra money but trust me it really is worth it in the long run if you're really going to be doing a heavy use the first significant feature that you're gonna notice on this is the actual design now as peek says they've utilized a new architecture that eliminates wasted space so you're gonna notice that the columns on this are not round this is going to allow for a much smaller fold down from traditional tripods and the result is going to be a collapsed tripod that's about the diameter of a water bottle that's something that fits really easy into a suitcase or even the side bag pocket the legs are designed in five sections and each of them deploy with quick-release cam levers so you can have a tripod fully deployed and ready to shoot in they say under 10 seconds or at least that's their office record over at peak design either way it's really fast and easy to set up so the standard configuration is that this comes with Peaks compact ball head that uses Peaks own mounting plates now there is a separate kit that you can get that has a ball head in it this is the default one I think it's actually really good the plates are interesting too and if you've ever had something like the camera clip you know what these are these are super low profile if you need them to live on your camera for a while they're not big and clunky like plates are from some other manufacturers it's also worth noting that they are arca-swiss compatible now want to note here that there really isn't a standard for arca-swiss in fact sometimes you can get arca-swiss plates that are different sizes and they don't fit in what you're trying to mount them on but this will fit in most of the ones that I've used in my studio and I think it's a nice touch that they did not decide to make that proprietary the ball head has a quick release for the mounting plates as well as a lock so to release it what you want to do is just make sure the collar is in the unlocked position and then simply press the release tab it comes right off of course when you have your camera ready to mount it's just going to lock into place when you set it on in the ball head for extra stability just turn the collar into the lock position now I am a big fan of simplicity in design because the last thing you want to be doing when you're out in the field trying to get a shot is fiddling with things trying to get this into position everything on here is a real simple layout and couldn't be easier to use so to raise the center column all you're going to do is take the knob on the side you can pull it out so you're not pinching yourself and simply turn it to unlock it you can raise the center column and then you turn that to lock it down super easy when you want to adjust the articulation of the ball head right under the lock dial there's a secondary dial I'm just going to turn that to unlock the entire ball head and you simply turn this into position if I want to go a little bit to the side if I want to go into portrait it's going to kind of lock down into that position if I want to level this off you have two options there is a level on the ball head itself the other thing you can do to reposition this is just grab the center column lower it and the design is such that this just gonna lock it back into place I can lock that dial down once again then I bring it up and I'm even steven not sure who Stephen is but it's really easy to use another standard feature that I think got a really unique redesign is the way that the counterweight hook works on the bottom of the center column so typically you would use this if you're shooting in windy conditions you can put a counterweight such as your backpack or something on here and it will steady the tripod even further so the other thing you can do is release this hook if you want to invert the center column for a really low angle shot the way you're gonna do this is if you look on the hook itself you're gonna realize there are two pieces that mount this to the center column what you want to do is take the bottom of the two pieces one with the air on it pull that down and then simply twist to unlock and this makes the hook come off also you're gonna notice that there is a smartphone tripod adapter that is included inside the center column all these parts are magnetic that's hard to see in the video but it makes it so they don't just fall out and you lose things but this is really cool because if you want to just whip out your phone to get a shot on the tripod you've got eight an adapter with you you can simply put that on your smartphone and then you don't even need the mounting plate this is just the same spec as the mounting plate put it right into the ball head and you're ready to go also included is the set of hex keys which come in handy for a couple different things first of all you're going to need a hex key for tightening the mounting plate when you're attaching that to the camera and the smaller hex key can be used to adjust the tension on the cam levers for the leg releases so if you want them a little tighter or a little bit looser you can adjust those according to taste so once again a very well thought out and finally we have two anchor points on the tripod these are for using peak designs anchor strap system that makes the tripod even more portable so these are the same ones that you use with any peak design strap typically they go on strap lugs on the camera but they can attach to these anchor points and then you can take this on the go with a camera strap so another way to carry there are three things that I think make this a very unique tripod first of all peak today wonderful job of thinking this through and what you have is a tripod that is specifically designed for travel it is compact its lightweight and it's full-featured so you don't have any of the weird trade-offs I talked about before where you might have a lightweight tripod but you're missing something everything is here the second thing I love is is fast and easy to deploy in fact another feature I didn't think about earlier is the height on this I don't think I mentioned it goes from this size into a full five-foot tripod so you get a lot of height and a lot of flexibility with this and then the third thing that I really love the P kept done on this and I think this speaks more to peak design overall than it does just to this tripod but I like how they're building an ecosystem and earlier I talked about the fact that this ecosystem isn't always proprietary which i think is very important too so you have tripod mounting plates that are arca-swiss compatible for instance so you have options on that but if you are buying him to the peak design system for instance the anchor points and being able to use a peak design strap with this you can kind of plug and play and mix and match things and I think that's a really good way to go and its really well-thought-out another thing that I want to say about the launch of this tripod so from today which is April 7th all the way to April 10th that's four days 100% of the profits from every tripod sold so no matter where you get it they're gonna be donated to supporting kovat 19 disaster relief as well as combating climate change this launch is going to enable peak design to basically keep its global contractors and partners gainfully employed while addressing not one but two global disasters I'll put a link in the show description if you want more information I would love to hear from you so drop me a comment as well I'll catch you guys in the next video until then later\n"