A random nice write up on Sirui R-2004 tripod

After getting my hands on the R-2004 (tripod) and K20X (ballhead) I find that they are quite cool and so decided to do a simple and brief review on them.

Anyway, the official spec of the two products are as shown,

Sirui R-2004

Material: Aluminum
Number of sections: 4
Maximum Diameter (legs): 28mm
Minimum Diameter (legs): 19mm
Minimum Height: 360mm
Maximum Height: 1350mm
Maximum Height (wth center extended): 1610mm
Minimum Height (Storing height): 520mm
Weight (without ballhead): 1.7kg
Maximum Load (allowed): 15kg

Sirui K-20X

Maximum Diametre (Ball): 38mm
Maximum Height: 98mm
Weight: 0.4kg
Maximum load (allowed): 25kg

When I bought the tripod, it came with a cool tripod bag, that is big enough for the tripod and ballhead.

The tripod was solid when I first took out of the box. It was a pretty sight.

Tripod (bare)

Tripod (with ballhead)

The tripod also came with retractable spikes at its feet.

I did a quick look at it in my room. (I know my room is a mess, so don't bother pointing it out).

The first thing I notice when deploying the tripod was that the screw locks are pretty tight and you need some force to unloosen the tightness of the screw locks so that the legs can extend... However I believe that is a must because I wouldn't want my tripod to collapse in the mist of a phototaking session because the screw lock loosen.

The ballhead is strong... I load it with mine heaviest set up (300mm f4L with 1.4x Kenko teleconverter, 40D + BG-E2 and 430EX II flash) - (1030g [camera with grip] + 330g [flash] + 1190g [300mm lens] + 181g [1.4x teleconverter] = 2731g)

The ballhead could hold on well in many different position so far.

Basically during all these tests... I did not notice any visible ballhead creep (or I think that is what it is call - the ballhead seemed very solid and not moving when not wanted to).

Another feature that I found very useful (I believe this feature is available to most tripods though), was that the camera can be mounted reverse. This would enable taking photo at a very low level.

It is easy to do that, the first thing that we need to do was to remove the hook that was to be use for hooking of the bag.

The removal was easy, it was just a matter of unscrewing the hook from the stand.

After removal of the hook, the entire center piece can be removed from the tripod and inserted reverse. One common sense thing to take note of, was that when removing and inserting the center piece reverse to the tripod, ensured that the camera was not loaded on the tripod. Only after you have finish assembly, then load your camera on.

Other than this feature, the rest of the features are pretty standard... such as able to hook your bag on.

Overall I am pretty happy with the tripod and ballhead.

(Update: it had been almost a year since I got this tripod and written this review in my old blog, I have used this tripod extensively in many of my shoots. One thing I notice was that the tripod cannot go as low as I would have like, it don't have a vertical arm or provision for a lateral arm. There are ballhead creep... but is quite mild, I have learned to live with that).