The Benro Theta Intelligent Modular Travel Tripod had a terrific Kickstarter campaign raising nearly $2.5million USD. Benro has now made the Theta available for preorder directly from them. As an added bonus, you can save $200 bringing the price down to $399 (Reg $599).
How does the Theta self-levelling work?
Auto-level helps us save time by eliminating the need to manually adjust the legs. However, what we ultimately need is to get the camera level on the ball head; Additionally, can Theta continually keep the camera level while we adjust the ball head for composition?
With this in mind, the Theta ball head was designed with a locking system that allows the ball head to be aligned with the tripod at all times. This means that the ball head can be switched between free mode and roll lock mode. While in roll lock position, when the tripod is level with the ground, so is the camera.
Benro https://www.benro.com
The Benro Theta is scheduled to ship in October 2023.
Unfortunately, a lot of kickstarter buyers of the Polaris are still very frustrated with the software from Benro and them not delivering what they promised during the campaign and sinificantly post delivery. The Polaris has a lot of potential but the SW lets it down.
Theta looks a lot simpler - thankfully!
It would be useful for landscape/watefalls/seascapes when changing composition frequently but hard to justify the cost and longevity in salty conditions... and something more to charge up :cool: