Joby GorillaPod Original Tripod - Charcoal

Product Information

ii) Removable– the GorillaPod features a quick-release tripod plate which attaches to your camera/device, allowing it to be quickly removed from the GorillaPod (much like a regular camera tripod).

GorillaPod | Joby

For panning, the base of the BallHead 5K features a numbered scale for faster, more precise movements while capturing panoramas. All the knobs have a grippy, soft touch to the rubber and combined with the smooth adjustments, it feels like a premium product. However, as much as the flexible legs allow you to do, we did notice that the legs can be stiff and difficult to move at times. The legs of the tripod can take a little extra time to get positioned exactly how you want them because of their stiffness. It’s designed for premium mirrorless cameras, and it can hold up to 3 kg of weight, which is more than enough to hold the weight of a full-frame mirrorless camera with even a long and heavy telephoto lens.

The removable ball head supports an Arca-Swiss quick release plate, allowing you to attach it to your camera and keep it there as long as you wish, ready to be secured quickly to the top of the GorillaPod 5K using a tightening knob at the side. We just noticed that sometimes they felt a bit sticky, so it was difficult to get them into the exact position we wanted, and it took a few attempts to get the positioning right.

GorillaPod 3K Kit, Flexible Lightweight JOBY JB01507-BWW GorillaPod 3K Kit, Flexible Lightweight

However, if you tend to shoot more landscape or astrophotography, or just have a very heavy camera and lens setup and need something sturdy, this tripod may not be the right one for you, and you may want to opt for something a bit bigger and more stable with a higher weight load. If you’re interested in vlog-style videos where you need to walk and talk with a camera facing you, this is a good way to achieve more reach away from your body for more comfortable framing. One simple tightening knob secures the ball in the socket, with the entire tripod screwing into the base of your device (in this case, a Manfrotto Lykos LED Light. Thankfully, many newer cameras do have an in-built spirit level that you can see on screen, so there are ways to combat this. But the only thing I don't like is that the thread that mounts onto the bottom of a camera - or in my case, to a Wescott Ice Light II - is either too short, too wide, or some other kind of imperfectly shaped.

Another knob controls the ball in the socket, with a cutaway placement for portrait orientation shots. You can also get a separate mount to attach your phone to the GorillaPod, opening up possibilities for other content creators too, not just photographers and videographers. This allows the tripod to wrap around and grip onto pretty much anything, anywhere, making it an extremely versatile tripod capable of things that full-size tripods cannot do. You’ll find that bending the legs repeatedly will result in the balls snapping out the sockets very quickly indeed.