Ulanzi & Coman Zero F38 Travel Tripod verdict
Summary
The Ulanzi F38 is a decent little travel tripod. It feels well made, it folds down small and stands tall when you need it to. The inverted ball head is clever because it has a separate pan axis on top that you can level properly, and my kit came with a swappable center column for any regular head. However, Ulanzi is keen to compare this with the Peak Design Travel Tripod and highlight the price difference. That’s all well and good, but that puts it in a middling position as being almost as good but not quite as expensive.
For
+Cheaper than the Peak Design travel tripod
+Clever ball head design
+Compact and easy to carry
Against
-Bespoke QR plate
-Legs mark up easily
-Center column clamp flex when extended
Travel tripods are ten-a-penny these days, and carbon fiber tripods like this one are common too. But a couple of things set the Ulanzi F38 apart. One is its clever low-profile ball head, the other is its similarity (no accident, perhaps) to the iconic Peak Design Travel Tripod.
Indeed, Ulanzi’s own marketing targets Peak Design, and in particular the price differential. Ulanzi’s carbon fiber tripod costs about the same as the aluminium version of Peak Design’s and way less than the carbon fiber model.
And there are lots of features in the Ulanzi tripod that ‘pay homage’ (let’s just leave it at that) to the Peak Design travel tripod. Compared to its posh rival, the Ulanzi certainly looks good value – but in absolute terms, this is still a pretty expensive tripod at $370, so it needs to be good on its own merits.
Specifications
Leg sections: 5
Leg locks: flip
Materials: carbon fiber, aluminium
Max height (with center column): 1590mm
Min height: 180mm
Folded length: 425mm
Center column payload: max 18kg
Ball head payload: max 6kg
Weight: 1.1kg
Key features
Up until the spider (the casting where the legs meet), the Ulanzi F38 is pretty standard for a travel tripod, with 5-section legs to offer a short folded length and good working height. Above that, things change.
First, most ‘travel tripods’ use a regular ball head, and these are pretty tall, adding precious cm to the folded length, so that the legs have to fold up and around the head to keep the folded length down. This increases the setup time, and not just in folding down the legs – the center column has to be extended before folding for this design to work.
The Ulanzi F38 is different. It has a low-profile ball head that extends the folded length very little and makes for much simpler packing – you simply close down the leg sections and fold them in around the center column.
That’s not all. The ball head has an ‘inverted’ design with the ball in the base and a separate panning axis in the top. This has immediate advantages for panning shots and video, because you can use the ball to level the pan axis. In conventional tripod heads, the pan axis is below the ball, which doesn’t level panning movements at all.
The center column has a triangular rather than a round section and isn’t that long, though long enough. In the base is a detachable hook which reveals a hex key for tightening the quick release plate on to the base of your camera.
If you’ve used the Peak Design Travel Tripod (I have one), the low-profile head design, the non-circular column and the detachable gadget in the base will be like déja vu. But there are differences.
Build and handling
The Ulanzi head is better than the Peak Design head but not without limitations of its own. It’s better – much better – in that it has a separate panning axis that you can level with the ball head.
However, while the QR plate looks Arca Swiss compatible, it’s not that simple. The width is the same, but there’s something about the profile of the jaws that stops other plates sliding in – or at least the ones I’ve got. There’s also locking pin that needs a corresponding slot in the QR plate. As far as I can see, you could perhaps use the Ulanzi plate on other Arca Swiss head, but you can’t use a regular Arca Swiss plate on this head.
The pull-and-twist knob for the locking pin sits a bit close to the camera plate, as does the pan axis knob, but it is a very compact design and a very clever head, so it’s worth making some allowances. I’m not so keen on the ball clamping lever, which does not click shut in any way – you just squeeze until you feel you’ve squeezed hard enough.
The center column clamp uses the same kind of lever, and has an issue of its own. The clamp locks the column securely in a vertical direction, but you can feel an awful lot of sideways flex if you rock the column with your hand when it’s extended. It doesn’t look as if it would affect the camera stability, but it doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.
Center column aside, the Ulanzi 38 feels pretty rigid for such a lightweight tripod and, providing you’re not extending the column, pretty much on a par with the Peak Design.
Ulanzi F38 vs Peak Design Travel Tripod
Ulanzi, and various online reviewers of the F38, make a great play on the similar cleverness of the F38 and its much lower price. Well, they are not really comparable.
The Ulanzi is cheaper, and straight away you can tell. It’s good in its own right, and fair value too, but it does not have the folded compactness and overall rigidity (back to that center column) of the Peak Design.
The Peak Design Travel Tripod matches the Ulanzi for height but folds down little shorter (and into a bag several cm shorter). The center column mechanism is stiffer by several orders of magnitude, and the removable gadget in the base of the center column is in fact a smartphone clamp with a clever Arca Swiss base. The Peak Design has its own hex key (two, in fact) in a small detachable holder that clamps to the leg.
The Ulanzi wins for its head, but the Peak Design scores an equalizer (or the decisive goal, depending on how you feel about these features), with its phone clamp. It also takes regular Arca Swiss plates.
There will be a lot of people who feel the Peak Design Travel Tripod is unduly expensive and that the Ulanzi F38 is just as good and cheaper. There will be just as many who feel the quality difference is obvious and the Ulanzi is just a cheaper substitute for the real thing.
Personally, I think if you’re going to spend this kind of money you might just as well spend big and get the best. I know a lot of people think differently, and for them the Ulanzi F38 might well be the best choice.
Verdict
The Ulanzi F38 is a very good travel tripod with some very clever design features. I like the head but I don’t like the non-standard QR plate fitting. I like the leg stability but not the flex in the center column clamp. It’s also in a bit of a no-man’s-land for price, in my opinion, by not being the stand-out best nor the stand-out cheapest. For myself, I’d rather spend less on a cheaper tripod or more on a better one. But hey, it’s still good.