REVIEW - Benro TSLO8AN Tripod
The Benro TSL08AN is an affordable, lightweight, portable tripod that is a fantastic companion to any photographer’s gear. Whether you’re a travel, cityscape or landscape photographer, this tripod is small enough to fit on the side of almost any bags with a length of 51cm as well as not weighing your pack down at just 1.2 Kilograms it’s not much heavier than your average Full Frame DSLR with a lens!
With the tripod being folded to such a small size you’d think it would lack in quality, well think again. Fully extended the tripod offers a working height of 146cm which is the same as most other travel tripods. The legs can each lock into three different angled positions providing flexibility whilst shooting, the leg sections also use aluminium twist locks instead of the usual plastics that are found at this price point, this will provide durability to the locking mechanisms, twist locks are quick to set up and most importantly will ensure you can’t accidentally knock them loose during a shoot.
This tripod also includes four quite big features that are all hard to come across on one tripod at this price point. Firstly, the tripod has two bull’s eye spirit levels, one on the ball head and another on top of the spider legs frame so you can level both sections of the tripod for a level shot or panoramic shot. Working on from panoramic shots, the tripod also features degrees’ markings on the ball head to make your panoramic shots that bit easier.
At the bottom of the centre column is a hook, this is extremely useful because the tripod is extremely light and so anchoring it down with you bag allows you to get sharp images even with quite strong winds. (The tripods maximum carrying weight is 4 kilograms, due to the head, the legs can take a lot more, allowing you to add balast). Lastly, one of the best features I found when using this tripod was that you can invert the centre column by just unscrewing the hook, allowing you to get those super low shots still with the stability of a tripod.
This is a fantastic little tripod that has many great features packed into a small form factor travel tripod and the best thing about this tripod the Benro have produced is that there are two variants, Aluminium and Carbon Fibre both priced at £74.99 and £109.00 respectively; so if you wish to shed even more weight off of your gear then maybe the extra £34.01 might be worth it.