Review of the Manfrotto 714B Digi Tripod with Ballhead.
Copyright © 2006 NK Guy
http://photonotes.org/reviews/manfrotto-digi/
First, if you’re interested in this mostly decent small tripod, be sure to read the last section before making a buying decision. There’s a serious problem with it.
Next, some background about why I bought this. And that is I hate tripods. I really do. They’re big, clumsy, awkward, heavy. They are, in short, a pain in the arse. Or, to be more accurate if you use tripods the way I do, a pain in the shoulders. But if you’re remotely serious about photography there are many many occasions when forgoing a tripod is not an option. An extreme example is night photography - no way you can handhold anything there, even with the latest and fanciest IS lens. Even if you never shoot anything in the dark you still need a tripod to get the sharpest possible results - landscape photography, for example.
Big tripods really suck.
Tripod snobs will claim that nothing less than a solid carbon fibre vibration-free tripod with each leg the size of a telephone pole and linked by titanium-holmium alloy joints, topped by a bowling-ball sized ballhead engineered down to nanometer tolerances by Swiss gnomes, will do. And they’ll look down your nose at anything smaller. But for me there’s the slight problem of real life getting in the way, especially outside the context of outdoor nature photography.
Serious tripods are a problem because of their sheer bulk, obviously. But even if you’re the manliest of manly photographers, keen on hauling masses of gear around when you’re not engaging in caber tossing, you’re still going to bump up against one serious issue in urban settings - paranoid security.
Particularly in the post 2001 world, security personnel all over freak over tripods. There are all kinds of reasons given. Maybe they claim that a tripod could be used to support a machine gun. (must be a hell of a heavy tripod) Or that a tripod leg could conceal some dangerous weapon. Or that they simply get in the way of people walking around. Or they want to maximize sales in their gift shop and don’t want people taking their own photos of stuff.
Usually there’s no reason given - it’s just not their policy to allow tripods for whatever reason - legitimate or selfish or random. And so carrying a tripod around is often a red flag for these guys.
Smaller tripods.
One way out of this problem is to use a teeny tiny plastic tripod, like an Ultrapod. This sort of thing is fine if you don’t need height or there are convenient objects to rest or strap the tripod onto. But that’s often not an option.
How I often use tripods.
Let’s say you’re spending a few days in Paris, like I was the other week. You know you want a tripod with you, because you want to do some night shots in the evening without having to go back to your hotel room. But you also don’t want to kill your shoulders during the day, and you want to visit a few museums like the Orsay during the day.
You can’t do this with a proper full-sized tripod. But with a small portable tripod that doesn’t weigh too much you can take a medium-sized backpack. And hide the tripod inside the backpack, where it won’t set off alarm bells with security staff. Some places, such as the Louvre, do now X-ray all incoming bags, but smaller places like the Orsay don’t.
I don’t use the tripod in places like museums - it’s rude and I don’t really want to photograph other people’s artwork anyway. But I want the ability to photograph the building or whatever, and don’t want to have to go back to the hotel to get the tripod.
That’s where smallish backpackable tripods like this Manfrotto model are quite valuable.
Manfrotto 714B Digi Tripod with Ballhead.
The Manfrotto "digi" 714B is one of the latest products to come out with a stupid marketing name emphasizing its suitability for digital cameras. Which is of course a load of crap. As if a tripod like this is somehow better suited for digital than a camera built for film 10 years ago. But there you go. It’s built by Italian tripod maker Manfrotto in Italy. In the USA it’s distributed by Bogen, but under the Manfrotto name. As it’s a recent product it has the same product number on both sides of the Atlantic, unlike earlier Manfrotto products distributed by Bogen, which often got US-specific numbers.
There is a version with a pan head, the 718B, which is longer and therefore less useful to me. And there’s also the 714SHB, which is shorter at 35cm closed.
When closed the 714B Digi tripod is 44cm (17.3") long. Its maximum height is 163cm (64") with extended centre column and 133cm (52.3") with lowered column. Its minimum height is 40.5cm (16"). It weighs 1.15 kg (2.5 lbs) and its official maximum load is 2.5kg (5.5 lbs).
It’s a short tripod with four-section legs made of anodized black aluminium. Each section is held in place with a quick release pressure flip clamp. Each leg is roughly triangular (sort of a rounded triangle) in section, so the legs don’t rotate. The legs attach to a compact metal top piece via a clever rotating hinge that attaches to one side of the leg only. It’s sturdy and small - nicely done. Each leg is terminated with a triangular rubber foot which is angled to maximize contact with the ground.
The tripod also has a centre column almost as long as the collapsed legs, which is held in place with a red plastic flip-out clamp (it isn’t geared). There’s also a tiny ballhead concealed in the top of the centre column. The ballhead is tightened via a rubber knob on the lower end of the centre column. The column can be reversed if you unscrew this knob. The ballhead has a standard 1/4"-10 bolt on the end - compatible with the type of bolt used on virtually every consumer and 35mm camera out there. You’d need an adapter to fit the 3/8"-16 bolts used by medium format cameras and other heavier cameras, but there really would be no point, as this tripod can’t realistically handle the weight of something that big.
The tripod ships with a carrying bag with shoulder straps. It’s a reasonably well made bag, black with a grey panel, and closes with a drawstring. Unfortunately it has MANFROTTO on it in huge white letters.
What’s good about it.
The 714B Digi is a handy size - small enough to be portable, but sturdy and tall enough to actually be useful. The legs are thick enough and solid enough to put the tripod into a very different category from cheap flimsy toy tripods.
It’s not quite full height for me - when the three sectioned legs are fully extended I have to bend over to peer into the viewfinder. But if I want to raise the centre section I can get it close enough.
But the main thing is I can fit this tripod in a mid-sized backpack and hide it. Unfortunately I haven’t found a camera bag that meets the restrictions of European discount airlines that can accommodate it, but there you go.
I like quick-release clamps. I don’t like tripods with round knurled rotating leg connectors, as I find them annoyingly time-consuming to tighten and loosen. I’d rather flip open a clamp quickly. The clamps can be adjusted at any leg position, so you can accommodate uneven ground that way. The red plastic clip holding in the centre column is also quick and handy.
The mini ballhead is cute if your camera’s light enough for it. The reversible centre column could be useful for people doing low-angle macro type shots.
What’s annoying about it.
The tiny ballhead is too small (about a centimetre in diameter) to support the weight of an SLR and large lens (eg: any Canon L lens) in anything other than landscape mode. You’ll find it sagging a lot otherwise. If you’re using a digital point and shoot or a smaller SLR with a light lens then it may be adequate, but that’s about it. For heavier gear you’re probably going to have to keep the centre column fully lowered, with the ballhead tucked away, and never shoot in portrait orientation. I usually end up attaching a small Benbo ballhead on top of the Manfrotto tripod and relying on that instead, since the 714B’s head is not removable.
The threaded screw relies on friction to hold onto a camera, not screw pressure. I hate this, but then it doesn’t have a quick release plate, so it isn’t that surprising.
If you don’t know what I mean by this, basically the point on the tripod head which attaches to the camera is a threaded screw and a flat metal disc with rubber base. You thread the screw into the tripod mount on the camera and tighten it by hand. This is generally fine if the camera’s in portrait configuration, but if you rotate it 90 degrees to get to portrait mode then the weight of the camera can cause it to come unscrewed from the mounting point.
What works far far better is a flat plate with a separate rotating screw in it. The flat plate does not rotate and the screw does. This holds things much more securely because the screw isn’t transmitting rotational force from the tripod - it’s pressure from the screw that’s holding things in, not friction between the tripod plate and the camera base. But this sort of design is really only possible on tripod mounts with a quick-release plate, so I don’t blame Manfrotto for this - just to point it out as an issue.
The legs can’t be detached in the field, and you can’t adjust the angle at which the legs splay out. There is no spirit level. The ballhead is not removable, and the tripod does not come with a hook for hanging stabilizing weights from the bottom of the centre column. (though you could loosen the knob and wrap a string around it and tighten it if you had to) I don’t think those are huge issues, since this is a small tripod, but just things to keep in mind.
What’s really really crap about it.
The tripod has a serious design flaw which manifested itself about a year after I bought it. It broke.
Basically the leg clamps have plastic frames or collars around the bottom of each section of leg. Three of the smaller clamp collars split down the middle because of the pressure applied to them by the clamp mechanism. The plastic just isn’t thick enough to withstand regular use.
This sucks. The position of the cracks clearly indicates that it’s internal pressure from the clamps that caused them to break - it wasn’t me dropping or abusing the tripod. And I haven’t been using it in subzero temperatures, which always causes plastic to become more brittle. Basically this is a fundamental design flaw with the tripod.
Since I lost the receipt for it in my transatlantic move I had to pay for replacement parts from Manfrotto, even though it’s got a 2 year warranty. So a week or so after a phone call to Manfrotto’s UK parts service and 15 pounds later (approaching a third of the cost of the original tripod) I had the parts needed to fix the thing. Actually, they initially sent me the wrong parts, but to their credit sent me the correct part gratis once I complained.
I then replaced the clip frames. There is a brass pin which needs to be carefully tapped out of the frame using a blunt nail and small hammer, and then the bits fit together fairly easily. Of course, the first frame I installed broke while I was reassembling it - the frame is that fragile, so be careful with the hammer!
I also noticed that a significant part of the design flaw is that the small removable plastic pads under each rotating clip are simply too thick. Manfrotto ship different colour-coded plastic pads, so I substituted the thinner ones when replacing the broken clamps. I also took the preventative measure of shaving down all the other pads in my tripod with a sharp knife in an attempt to prevent this problem from recurring in the future. Oh, and one of the bolts holding the top part of the head together has fallen out and I've lost it. It seems to stay together with just two nuts and bolts, but it's obviously a bit frustrating.
Summary.
Well. Until it broke I was pretty happy with this thing. It’s definitely not the most stable tripod in the world - it can’t be. It’s too small to provide the sort of rock-solid foundation that you need for certain types of shots. But, having said that, it’s so small and portable that it’s allowed me to take a lot of photographs where it might not have been possible to take photos otherwise. Sure, massive tripods are great, but if they’re so big you can’t hide or carry them then you might end up with no photo at all.
However, I have to say that I was pretty irritated when it broke, as I do believe it’s an inherent design fault with the tripod. I don’t know if Manfrotto have fixed the issue with later models, but either way - keep your receipt if you buy one! The tripod becomes considerably less cost-effective if you need to repair it.
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