Vanguard Alta Pro 3VL 304CT review: sturdy carbon legs and a leveling base, bring your own head

Vanguard has been making tripods and photographic accessories since 1986 and I’ve tested a lot of them over the years. I was recently very impressed with the Vanguard Alta Pro 3VRL 303CV 18, a really tall and solid video tripod with a towering maximum operating height and 25kg load rating for its 3-section legs. My only gripes were that it’s still quite tall when folded, and heavy to carry around at 3.26kg. Then there was the Vanguard Alta Pro 3VLT 235CV 10, which I feel went a little too far the other way. It’s small when folded and only weighs 1.19kg complete with video head, but the bottom sections of its 5-section legs are quite spindly and I found it a bit wobbly.

The new Vanguard Alta Pro 3VL 304CT that I’m reviewing here aims to serve up the perfect compromise. It has robust 4-section legs, reaches a tall maximum operating height but folds down pretty small, and is sufficiently lightweight to carry with ease. Many people think that tripods with a leveling base are just for video, but they can be equally useful for many stills shooting scenarios. With that in mind, Vanguard has brought the legs to the market on its own, leaving customers to choose their own head. Hedging its bets, the Vanguard Alta Pro 3VL 304CT aims to be one of the best tripods for photographers as well as one of the best tripods for videographers.

Vanguard Alta Pro 3VL 304CT: Specifications

Vanguard Alta Pro 3VL 304CT: Price

I managed to get my hands on one of the first samples of the Vanguard Alta Pro 3VL 304CT, as soon as it went on sale. As I’m writing this, there’s no official USA price as yet, but it’s available for £300 in the UK. I think that stacks up pretty well against the larger Vanguard Alta Pro 3VRL 303CV 18 which costs $500/£500, and the smaller Vanguard Alta Pro 3VLT 235CV 10 which comes in at $330/£350. Bear in mind though, that both of these are priced as complete kits, whereas the 3VL 304CT is just a set of legs with no head.

Vanguard Alta Pro 3VL 304CT: Design & Handling

I like a tripod to be tall enough so that I can use it without stooping (and I’m pretty tall), but I also it to fold down small enough so that it’s easy to stow away. That’s often accomplished by the best travel tripods, using a design in which the legs swing fully upwards and the feet surround the head with the center column extended. That’s simply not going to work in this case, as the Vanguard has no center column. Even so, I’m impressed that the legs reach a lofty maximum operating height of 152.5cm / 60" (with no head attached), while folding down to just 56cm / 22", making them easy to pack away in small spaces. Speaking of packing away, the tripod is supplied with a nice-quality padded soft case.

The reason that the tripod has no center column is that it has an integral leveling base, built into its canopy. For me, that’s really the standout feature of the tripod. It’s brilliant for quick and easy leveling when I’m shooting video. There’s a good range too, with a full 360-degree rotation and +/-15 degrees of tilt. Without the platform being leveled (rather than just leveling the head), your horizon goes on the slant as soon as you start panning. At least, that’s what happens unless you have a ball head with a dual-axis panning mechanism, that allows you to pan just the camera plate instead of the base of the head.

As I’ve mentioned, accurate leveling of the tripod isn’t just essential for videography but can be really useful for landscape and architectural photography. It’s also great if you’re panning to shoot a sequence of stills for stitching into a panorama, otherwise, everything goes on the slant, just like shooting video.

Getting back to the long and the short of it, I like Vanguard’s decision to make this tripod with 4-section legs. Compared with 3-section legs, it helps to enable a tall maximum operating height while shrinking its stowage size to manageable proportions. You can stretch the benefit even further with 5-section legs but, to my mind, the bottom leg sections generally end up being thin and spindly, and the extra set of section clamps is a chore to adjust. I feel that four sections are a good compromise in this case, and I like that despite it being a carbon fiber tripod, comfort padding is applied to one of the upper leg sections.

While I’ve been talking about the tripod being designed for stills as well as video, panning is a key ingredient for both, hence the leveling base. One thing I’ve often found when panning from right to left is that the head can come unscrewed from the legs and start wobbling around on its thread. It’s good that no less than three grub screws are featured in the platform, to keep the head firmly locked in place.

There’s actually an upside to not having a center column, in that it’s really quick and easy to set up for ultra-low-level shooting. The legs have three lockable operating angles, at 23°, 50° and 80° to the vertical. In their most splayed setting, you can shoot right down to a minimum height of 14.5cm / 5.7" (plus the height of your tripod head) without a center column getting in the way. The pushbutton release for changing the leg angles is particularly simple to use.

The leg section clamps are twist locks, which I generally prefer to flip-action locks. The ones fitted here work really well, with minimal rotation required to loosen them and tighten them again. It’s also easy to grab all three of the twist locks for each leg and loosen or tighten them with one gesture, when the legs are at their shortest length. Down at the bottom, the feet are made from rubber pads which screw in to reveal metal spikes. This gives a firm footing on hard and soft ground respectively.

Vanguard Alta Pro 3VL 304CT: Performance

One area of tripod performance that’s perhaps not often mentioned is setup time. I feel that some tripods and heads can take so long to set up that you can be in serious danger of missing the shot. That’s certainly not the case here, as the Vanguard is super-speedy to set up, including adjusting the height, leg angles and levelling the head.

When I tested the more lightweight 5-section Vanguard Alta Pro 3VLT 235CV 10, I wasn’t overly convinced by its rigidity. When I used it at maximum operating height placed on a hard floor, I found that I could tap one of the legs with a finger and vibrations would take about 10 seconds to die down. Trying the same thing with this tripod, vibrations ceased after about 5 seconds. You could argue that’s twice as good, or maybe half as bad. Either way, the tripod is more prone to vibrations than a couple of my own heavy-duty tripods that I’ve been using for a few years, namely the Manfrotto 055 MT055CXPRO3 and 3 Legged Thing Winston 2.0.

I think that versatility is another key factor of tripod performance, in practical terms. I love that the Vanguard makes it so quick and easy to shoot from really low levels, without having to remove or invert a center column. From a creative standpoint, that adds a lot to abilities for both videography and still photography. Further versatility is enabled by the inclusion of two 1/4” sockets for attaching ‘Magic Arms’ (sold separately) for adding the likes of a microphone or LED lamp.

Vanguard Alta Pro 3VL 304CT: Verdict

I really like the Vanguard Alta Pro 3VL 304CT. And there really is a lot to like here. Despite not being a ‘travel tripod’ with swing-up legs, it ably performs that trick of extending to a lofty maximum operating height while also folding down to a conveniently small packing size. It’s pretty lightweight and easy to carry around too, despite having a beefy 13kg / 28.7lb payload rating. I’m completely sold on the quick and easy levelling base, which is a joy to use, and I love that the lack of a center column enables super-simple low-level shooting. The only fly in the ointment as far as I’m concerned is that I’d expect a carbon fiber tripod with such a hefty payload rating to be a little less susceptible to vibration after being jogged.

Alternatives

The Vanguard Alta Pro 3VRL 303CV 18 video tripod is a full-sized, heavy-duty kit. It has a comprehensive feature set, very good performance and comes complete with a video head. However, it’s considerably bigger, heavier and costs around $500/£500.

The Vanguard Alta Pro 3VLT 235CV 10 is more of a compact, lightweight affair and comes with a fluid pan head, ideal for videography. The complete kit costs $330/£350 and has a maximum payload rating of 5kg / 11lb.