Review Date: 30 December 2021
I thought I’d review the Sirui AM-284 tripod because I couldn’t find any useful reviews online. There were a couple of YouTube video reviews but from my experience they’re always pretty light on content.
I was in the market for a travel tripod, something smallish, lightish, stable and easy to deploy. Top of my list was the Gitzo GK1545T-82TQD. This is a surprisingly light weight (1.45kg including ball head) yet stable tripod. I’ve looked at it in the WEX showroom and it really is a significant level above any other tripod of a similar weight that I’ve ever looked at. The down side being that it costs around £550! You could argue you’re getting a tripod that will last you a life time but even so there are limits.
I have a 3 series Gitzo tripod and I love it but it is huge, it’s the XLS version so can extend so I can stand under it on tiptoes and the bottom of the spider doesn’t even touch the top of my head! With a head on it it’s almost 3” long when folded so it’s not the smallest or most transportable of tripods. You wouldn’t really want to carry it up a mountain or walk for 10 miles or more with it. Although I have done that while carrying it by hand but it’s not ideal.
So I was ideally in the market for a tripod weighing no more than 1.6kg which would go in the side pocket of my rucksack yet be solid and stable. I did see a comment in a review of the Peak Design tripod that the lady writing the review had been asked several times if the Peak Design tripod was good enough to be the only tripod someone would need. Her answer was no, a travel tripod will never be as stable as a 3 series Gitzo tripod. A fair comment I’d say.
So, I’d got down to either the Peak Design tripod because of its compactness or the Sirui AM-284 with A-10R ball head. The Leofoto LS-284C also looked like a contender as well as looking almost identical to the Sirui AM-284 both in model number and stats. I’m not sure who ripped off who’s design there but I’m guessing one or the other company did. I could buy the Peak design aluminium travel tripod for £240, the Sirui AM-284 with A-10R head for £208 or the Leofoto for £330. So as the Leofoto looked pretty much identical to the Sirui it didn’t seem to make much sense to pay half as much again for it.
I was unable to look at the Peak Design tripod in WEX because they come fully sealed. The things that concerned me about the design of that tripod were first and foremost the ball head. Because of how it’s designed you’re only ever going to be able to tilt it so far up or down. I’ve never seen anyone mention this in a review of it but I’m sure that must be the case because the 3 pronged grip around the ball is integral to the plate on which the camera mounts so you can’t just turn the camera until you can point it down or up. I was also a bit concerned about how stable the tripod would be with the relatively slim lower leg sections.
Something that is worth commenting on is that there’s carbon fibre and then there’s carbon fibre. I previously owned a Manfrotto 055XPROB which was an OK tripod but I’d had issues with it in the wind. Basically a bit of wind caused it to resonate, a bit like a violin string. A good test for this is to set the tripod up at your normal working height and flick one of the legs with your finger. With the 055XPROB I could see the leg twang like a bow string. So, I went into WEX and tried the same thing with Manfrotto MT055CXPRO3 055, assuming the carbon fibre version would be much deadened and nowhere near as resonant. Much to my surprise the leg twanged like a bow string just the same as the aluminium version! I then tried the same thing with the Gitzo 3 series tripod that I ended up buying and the leg just went thud when I flicked it, there was no visible resonance at all.
So the moral of this story is just because a tripod has carbon fibre legs doesn’t necessarily mean it’s any more stable than the aluminium version. The test I’ve just outlined is very much worth doing if you’re in the market for a new tripod. The other test that’s worth doing is the same thing but with a mirrorless camera on top of the tripod set to full zoom, say 70mm on a 24-70mm lens, and full magnification on the screen. With this test, no matter how good your tripod is you will see movement when you flick the tripod leg so the measure of stability is how little movement and how quickly it dies down.
So anyway, I bought the Sirui Sirui AM-284. What appealed to me about it, amongst other things, was that the carbon fibre legs are almost as wide, at all stages, as my Gitzo 3 series tripod! Which does seem truly remarkable for a light weight travel tripod. I also liked the panning Arca Swiss mount plate. These are great because it means you can level the camera and even if the tripod isn’t level you can still pan the mount plate and maintain a level pan.
What is the tripod like in the flesh? It’s good. The rotating leg locks are super chunky, maybe a little excessively so but that doesn’t cause a problem. The tripod is pleasingly slim due to the lack of centre column. I measures about 80mm across the legs which is pretty much the same dimension as the Peak Design tripod. With the A-10R head fitted it’s about 520mm long against the Peak Design being 391mm so it is about 130mm longer when folded.
One nice thing, that is similar to my Gitzo tripod, is that the twist locks require very little rotation to free them and lock them. I’d say about quarter of a turn is sufficient. This makes deployment much easier.
I’m not totally sure about the head. There’s a lot to like about it, the panning mount plate, the friction control on the main knob. There’s a sprung safety pin in the mount plate so if you’re using the supplied Arca Swiss plate it will not just slip out of the clamp when you loosen it. I tend not to use Arca Swiss plates because I have Arca Swiss l-brackets on all my cameras. The main knob seems to require more force than you’d expect to get it to grip the ball really hard and avoid any movement. However the head panning knob requires only a tiny amount of rotation to free the head to rotate. I have to say I think they’ve got the main ball tightening knob wrong, it requires too much force to tighten it and too much rotation. I’m not sure why a company like Sirui who specialise in making tripods and heads have managed to get this so wrong. So if you have weak hands or arthritis this might be a problem. There’s also a level of ball slip, a problem that a lot of heads suffer from whereby after you’ve framed your shot and you tighten the main ball locking knob the ball moves and changes your framing. So it’s disappointing, if not surprising, to see that this head suffers from this. I think it’s fair to say the tripod is far better than the head in this combination. I think the head will be OK for my purposes and I doubt I’ll change it but it ought to have been better.
I’m used to the main clamp knob being a bit longer than it is on this head but it’s not necessarily a problem that it is shorter unless you have an exceptionally fat camera body that overhangs the back of the clamp by an inch or more.
The control knobs are all metal. I much prefer this. I have a fantastic Vanguard ball head on my Gitzo tripod which I love in every respect because it’s light and just works really well. But the knobs are plastic/rubber coated so if you’re using it all day you end up with black fingers! And trust me it doesn’t wash off easily.
I did test this tripod along with my Gitzo tripod and my Rollei Rock Solid Gamma tripod that I use for macro work. I did the test I mentioned earlier of mounting a mirrorless camera with IBIS and OIS turned off, setting the lens to 70mm EFL and zooming in as far as I could in live view and then flicking the tripod leg.
The Rollei tripod, which is aluminium and generally very solid, showed the most movement and took the longest to settle down. Just over 4 seconds until the movement had died down after flicking the leg. Amazingly the Gitzo and the Sirui gave much the same result, a similar level of vibration which was gone in about 2 seconds. That’s pretty impressive from a relatively lightweight travel tripod.
I guess probably the biggest compromise with the Sirui is that you do not have a centre column so the maximum height, including the head, is about 1.28m. So if you’re 6” tall and want the camera viewfinder level with your eye when you stand up straight that’s not going to happen. Personally I can live with that because I’m only going to use this as a travel tripod. It would be somewhat of a limitation if you wanted it as your only tripod. The upside of course is that having no centre column means you can get really low to the ground by just splaying the legs to their maximum angle without any faffing about. This gets the top of the head down to just 150mm from the ground. The other benefit of not having a centre column is that you don’t have all the messing about that a lot of travel tripods have of having to raise the centre column and fold the legs up through 180 degrees to stow it and then reversing the whole process every time you want to use it.
The tripod is very slim when folded because of the lack of centre column
The general build quality of the head seems really good. Extending the legs isn’t quite as smooth as on my Gitzo tripod but it’s more than adequate and as I said earlier the legs lock and unlock with very little rotation of the leg locks which is good.
I’ve shown below some accelerometer measurements for a Manfrotto 055X ProB, a Gitzo GT3542XLS and the Sirui AM-284. The stimulus was a calibrated tap on one of the legs. All the tripods were set to the same height, so the Sirui was at full extension. The Manfrotto was a bit less than full height and the Gitzo was at roughly half its full height.
What is interesting is how bad the Manfrotto is! Do manufacturers not bother to test their products before they ship them? Note the x-axis on the plots, shown in seconds . Th Sirui and Gitzo plots are up to 4 seconds the Manfrotto is right out to 11 seconds and it’s still ringing like a bell! I also tested my Rollei Rock Solid Gamma aluminium tripod and the ringing on that had almost stopped 4 seconds after tapping it. What this does show is that carbon fibre is generally better damped than aluminium but there’s a huge difference between different aluminium tripods and I suspect as bigger difference between different makes of carbon fibre tripods too.
All of that aside what this does show is that the Gitzo tripod is the best, who’d have thought? But the Sirui is really not that far behind which is pretty impressive for a relatively small lightweight travel tripod. So it would seem that you don’t necessarily have to compromise on stability when you buy a travel tripod. The compromise with this tripod however is fully extended height. If you’re on the taller side and want to be able to stand up straight with your eye to the viewfinder then that’s not going to happen with this tripod. Other than that though I can fully recommend the AM-284 legs.
It’s just a pity Sirui didn’t make a better job of the A-10R ball head. There’s so much to like about it. It’s relatively lightweight, it’s quite low profile which is a really good match for the AM-284 legs, I love the panning mount plate. I just think the locking knob requires far too much force to lock tightly. Sirui shouldn’t have got this wrong as they’re more than capable of making decent ball heads. Such is life though. So I wouldn’t recommend buying the A-10R head with the AM-284 legs unless there’s an offer on which means you get it virtually free. You’d probably be better off with a cheap £25 Chinese head bough from Amazon. I’ll probably stick with it for the moment and see if I can live with it as I’m never going to use it with a load of more than 1.1kg.