Benro’s been offering several kinds of tripods across different price points over the years to help photographers in their journey. In this pursuit, it’s also been innovating to help photographers and videographers improve their efficiency. Its latest effort to achieve this comes in the form of a first-of-a-kind tripod called Theta. Benro Theta is a smart and modular tripod that takes care of many photography basics, so you can focus solely on things that matter more. Here’s a look at what makes Benro Theta stand apart from the rest of the camera tripods in the market today.
Design
At first look, the Theta looks like any other camera tripod, and it’s only when you look closely that the differences become more apparent. To begin with, Benro uses a trigonous center column—over a round one—on the Theta. The idea here is to eliminate the dead space between its legs and allow the tripod to fold completely. And, in turn, achieve a relatively smaller pack size than most tripods to make it easier to carry around in a backpack. Talking about the tripod’s legs, the design decision here is an interesting one. Unlike most traditional tripods, the Theta employs a round-tube design for its legs. Doing this allows the company to make the tripod sturdy, which minimizes shakiness from your images and videos, particularly in outdoor settings. The legs on the new Theta also come with an anti-slip mechanism for its legs. This ensures it doesn’t skid on floors easily and that your onboard equipment remains safe. When stacked against other tripods in the market, the Benro Theta is also a little smaller and lighter. It weighs around 1.25 Kg, which makes it travel-friendly and portable, thanks to its carbon fiber body. An added advantage of using carbon fiber is that it gives the tripod better structural integrity and also provides sufficient strength to carry up to 20 kg of payload. Last but not least, Theta is IP65 certified, with all the electronic circuitry located in the upper and middle sections of the tripod. So you can deploy it even in water and take shots without worrying about damaging it.
Deployment and Set Up
Almost all traditional tripods use a flip or twist mechanism for opening and closing the legs. Due to this, the deployment typically involves unlocking leg locks, expanding them, and locking them, which, as you can imagine, can take up a considerable amount of your time before the camera is ready to use. Benro Theta simplifies this by employing a unique deployment and retracting system. It essentially uses a twisting mechanism, which requires a simple deployment process: twist, pull (the legs out), and fasten, all in one go. This saves deployment time, so you can be up and ready to shoot with your tripod in no time and never miss a shot again. Another major pain point for photographers is mounting the camera onto the tripod. Benro simplifies this and offers faster mounting on the Theta by using a new ball head with a Quick Lock mechanism. With this new mechanism, you can mount your camera on top of the Theata in one step: simply press the camera on the ball head, and it automatically locks in place. Likewise, unmounting is also simplified with the new ball head. A simple twist of the ball head ring is all you need to unlock and remove the camera from the tripod.
Functionality and Features
Functionality isn’t a topic you bring up when talking about traditional tripods. However, with Theta, the story is different, as the tripod comes with a bunch of smart features to up your photography game. One of these features is auto-leveling. It tells the tripod to level itself automatically based on the terrain, so you don’t have to go through the tedious process of leveling it yourself. For this, the Theta uses an external battery module that you need to attach to one of the three module slots. After which, you simply press the button on the module to activate it, and it starts leveling the tripod automatically. Similarly, another useful feature of the Theta aimed toward offering better framing capabilities is support for a full range of motion on its new ball head. With this, once you lock the roll axis in place, you can freely pan and tilt the camera to compose and frame your shots without worrying about disturbing the leveling in the process. Benro says the battery module can perform auto-leveling 8000 times with a single charge. It can even power other devices you attach to the tripod as well as the camera. And when it runs out of charge, you can continue to use it like a traditional tripod. Much like the batter module, Benro Theta also has another useful module. It’s called Camera Control, and it lets you control your camera from up to 150 feet away using your smartphone, so you don’t have to stand next to it all the time to use it. Using this module, Benro also allows you to control things like shutter speed, ISO, aperture, shutter, and more via its mobile app. Additionally, there’s also the ability to live stream the feed from your camera to YouTube, Facebook, or other platforms.
Variants
Benro Theta comes in two variants: Theta and Theta Max. Benro has currently priced the bids for Theta at $349 and Theta Max at $399. At the core, both models feature the same design and offer the same set of functionality, and the only difference between the two is the size and the maximum holding capacity. As such, picking one over the other is totally dependent on the shooting equipment you use or plan on using. Similarly, your shooting height is also another aspect that you must factor in when choosing the size.
Interested? Pledge Now
A tripod can make or break photography. Hence, it’s important to pick the right tripod for your camera: something that’s portable, easy to deploy and use, and offers good stability to ensure your shots and footage come out nice. Benro Theta ticks all these checkboxes and offers a few additional functionalities on top of it. The result is a smart tripod that handles everything a traditional tripod does, but in a better manner and more efficiently, and assists you with several other aspects of photography to up your game. If this new modular design approach and smarts have piqued your interest, you can book a Theta or Theta Max today. Check out Theta on Kickstarter to learn more about the product and pledge for it! Buy Benro Theta on Kickstarter
