2026-10-09 Dynex Tripod

This Dynex brand tripod was picked up at a garage sale—I suspect for free—by some thrift store buddies of mine. They gave it to me. I accepted it joyfully because I appreciate the gift.
    Initially I was a little depressed as the quick release plate seemed to be missing but it was quickly found in the bottom of the carrying case. Then some other non-critical problems surfaced, but we will get to them soon enough.
    Before we go over the tripod—in 18 images!—some further details on where this tripod sits on the scale from world’s worst to world’s best. This tripod has some good points and some poor points.
    Good points—

• good design
• lots of features
• relatively light

    Poor features—

• Sometimes poor choice of materials
• Extremely light weight construction

    I think we will just go over the images with descriptive captions. Then there will be a dimension section. 

    The quick release plate has a video camera location post (that retracts) just in front of the tripod screw. There are two levels with one straight level built into the Quick Release frame and the bubble level located on the top of one leg socket. The panning motion is locked/released by the large knob beside the straight level. The tilting is locked/released by the head’s handle (chrome shaft next the QR release handle). Speaking of the QR release handle it won’t release the plate until it is held fully rotated clockwise.

    This view down towards the spider’s hub shows the leg stiffener to the right is bent compared to the one to the left.

    

    The leg spider braces slide up and down as the legs are opened for use. Ideally the legs should be splayed and the spider stiffener hub rotated to lock it in place. All that is partially ruined because the stiffeners are pop riveted in place and two of the three have had one end shear off. Compare the left rivet’s missing head to the right rivet’s large and intact head.

    Strangely the bent arm has an intact rivet but you can see how completely too thin one end of the rivet is compared to its head. Luckily the arm managed to bend back without the plastic cracking or the rivet failing.

    And here we get to the crux of the matter. The tripod will work fine without further repairs. The rivets don’t appear so loose they are going to fall out and frankly the whole spider/brace assembly doesn’t make that much difference to other stiffness problems.

    The other side of the brace shows the arm pretty firmly attached. Future repairs would require malleable aluminum rod, or really small threaded shafts with washers and nuts, or plastic rod with heat deformed ends or…
Update—Upon thinking more about the problem I decided to attempt to repair the damaged rivets. First I found two relatively large headed but short shafted tiny screws. The screw heads were about the same size as the rivets domed head. I found a really small drill, mounted it in a relatively huge 18-V drill and, holding the rivet shaft in a small pair of pliers shoved the rivet shaft into the spinning drill. Much to my surprise the relatively soft aluminum shaft was drilled without problems in both damaged rivets. Installing the rivets back in place and then screwing the small screws in place repaired the tripod! 
    

    The feet and leg lock assemblies work much better than the questionable plastic would lead you to believe. The rubber foot bumper spins up to reveal a mean looking metal spike. The spider arm attachment at the top seems vulnerable to breaking off, but so far is holding up fine.

    When you rotate the spider hub those three pads are forced in to lock the spider in place.

    That knurled ring at the hub locks the column in place. Despite their cheap plastic appearance all the controls work well—have some faith!

    Take the column crank as another example. When the column is collapsed the crank arm folds out of the way in the protected space between the legs. Yet pulling it up somehow cams it into projecting and staying in place. The end of the crank spins in your fingers making adjusting the column easy and smooth.

    The attachment screw on the QR plate has finger “wings” to make tightening the screw tool-less (rather than having to use a coin in a slot solution). The QR plate attachment socket is square so the plate top—that is rectangular—can fit under the camera lengthwise or widthwise.

    The hinge of the QR plate socket assembly has a striking design that says more about the creative use of relatively too-light plastic than engineering.

    Here the QR plate socket is rotated up so the camera can take verticals. The hinge stops the rotation at 90º. Actually mounting a 35 mm camera—a Pentax Spotmatic with normal lens—brought home just how lightweight this fold-up platform is.

    The inside view of the vertical flip plate shows the construction that might make you nervous the whole thing will shear off.

    It is a little reassuring the hub of the hinge is actually a metal threaded shaft. When the whole hinge shears off at least the plastic will be held together!

    This is the plastic the column slides through at the hub. The metal and plastic parts seem to work very well together.

    Here the tripod is set up fully extended. That said, a camera mounted at the top would be waving in a stiff wind. 

    The tripod came in this canvas bag. For heights and weights, read on…

Height collapsed (in bag) 61 cm 24 in
Leg splayed height
(no leg extension)         55.88 cm 22 in
Erect height
(with first extension alone) 86 cm 34 in
Erect height
(with 2nd extension alone) 88 cm 34.5 in
Erect height
(with both extensions)         117 cm 46 in
Column height                   33 cm 13 in
Total height
(legs and column extended)         151 cm 59.5 in
Maximum weight tripod should support 2.3 Kg 5 lb.
Tripod weight         1321 g 3 lb..
Approximate price (Amazon versions) $24-$41