Targus 50" Tripod: A Review

Monday, December 16, 2013



This is the Targus 50" Tripod. If you're anything like me, the price and the height is a green light to put in your credit card information to purchase. It's a great price, and it's almost as tall as I am, so I had high hopes for it.
Apparently, my hopes were placed in the wrong Targus product.
Now, I've bought this tripod 4 times now.
The first time was because I lost it. I don't know where it went, at all. So, I repurchased it. This is when it went down hill. The second one was promising for a while. It wasn't until one of the telescoping legs bent so bad it busted that I began to question this tripod. But, seeing as this was my first problem with the tripod, I thought that it would be okay to buy another, to just see. Right out of the box, number three has busted. I took it out of the drawstring bag and expanded it, and immediately, the center column fell out. The main portion of the tripod just ups and falls out. I fixed it with some handy super glue, but there is still no excuse for that. I looked it up, and apparently this is a common problem.
I wasn't using a DSLR with these tripods, I was using an Olympus VR-340, a point and shoot, so they should have been perfectly fine to handle it.
Now, this time, number 4, I made a huge mistake. I thought that maybe, if I could use my inner engineer in me, the inner Geordi LaForge, or Montgomery Scott, I could get this wonderfully affordable tripod to work for my DSLR. 
No, it doesn't. Not even the inner engineer could get it to work. It just slumps to the side and wobbles. Just the weight of my camera causes it to try to drop the center column elevator down, even when it's tightened to capacity. That's terrible! And, if I try to do a vertical shot, like every full body  photo taken for this blog ever, it won't do it, it just falls to the side. My T3 weights about 1.5 pounds with a basic lens 18-55 mm lens on it. This tripod says it can support up to 2.5 pounds. Obviously not. 

The box has a picture of a DSLR on the tripod on it, for goodness sake! You think it would be able to support the most basic of DSLRs.
I would not recommend this tripod to anyone with a DSLR. If you have a lightweight camera, than it's great for you. But, if you havea  camera with some girth, or one with any kind of weight, I would save up a tiny but more to get a better one. Don't let this tripod waver your faith in Targus products, though. Targus makes pretty decent camera bags and accessories.

What tripod do you have? Do you recommend it? Share your wisdom down below!

Much love, 




      

2 comments

  1. Anonymous12/16/2013

    i like how you tried to stay positive with a shitty product, but i love it nonetheless.xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have this same tripod! You know, I've never really thought of it as being a crappy one until reading this post right now and agreeing with many of the things you've said. I myself am on my second one of these--which is one too many. Hopefully they either improve them in the future or we can find a better one that is affordable still! x

    ReplyDelete

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