Neewer Photo Studio Heavy Duty 11 feet/3 meters Adjustable C-Stand, 3.5 feet/1 meter Holding Arm, 2 Pieces Grip Head for Video Reflector, Monolight and Other Photographic Equipment (Black)

First off, it's taller than stated here. The central column itself is 131cm, and the minimum assembled height with the central column attached to the turtle base is 153cm.I kept looking around on Amazon and this one was the cheapest, except for the 2 pack from Neewer (which is even cheaper). I'm very impressed with it. It's reassuringly heavy and solid. The black finish looks great.Looking at the reviews for the chrome finish version, one reviewer pointed out a flaw in the engineering, which led to his grip head breaking.So, I looked into it. Both grip heads have the same issue. Basically, after taking it apart (very easy to do without any tools) you'll be left with the main body of the grip head and one screw. The issue is that the body of the grip head has 15mm of thread and the screw is screwed in only about 4 threads (7mm). With a 14mm wrench, I unscrewed the nut (meant to secure the screw in place), took the nut out completely (which will leave you with about 13mm of thread on the screw) and mounted the screw back all the way in, tightening it with a pliers. You might secure it further with a drop of super glue on the thread before screwing it back in. I didn't. That's it. If you have the tools around, it takes just a few minutes to do both grip heads. Reassemble the grip head (if in doubt, just ask your mom to help you) and enjoy your awesome stand!

I just put it together and am wondering where the problems are that everyone talks about. Everything looks better than I expected, and moving it around certainly gives you a real arm workout for sure. Buy yourself a pair of gripping gloves when you get these, they are not air/oil filled and the extender pole will crash to the closing point if you lower it too fast, or drop it from ait maximum height. There is a spring in the base vertical pole to dampen the fall of the extension pole, probably to stop it damaging itself to much. When you first open the locking nut between the base and extension poles, it will shoot out (upwards), so STAND back and only unlock the 2 poles when you have them pointing upwards in the tri-foot stand. I will never force the base pole and extension pole together (compressing the spring) so that spring is loaded again, which is better for the spring anyway.Also buy some Neewer sand bags (yes you need to buy sand after), if you are going to mount something heavy, best use sand bags.There does appear to be some lubricant on all the nuts/bolts, my hands smell like oil right now, but it has speeded up my typing:-)Quality kit, I'm going to buy one of the C stands (without the arm), now I know how good this one is.Last bit I promise, this isn't going to be a great part of your mobile kit, unless you love a good arm work out. That said, if you have an expensive light then this is perfect for mobile, after all who wants to take rubbish quality lightweight stands which fall over in a breeze. This want even fall over in a hurricane (ok it might, but you know what I mean)!

Has worked really well. I followed the advice of another reviewer who took the nut out of the grip heads. I won't know if this change makes any difference but figured I would try it. The reason it's worth doing is because this is soooo much cheaper than normal C stands. I have so far used it to film from above using a Sony a6500, with a SmallHD focus attached. So it's pretty strong. If you're doing it for over head camera use, I would recommend using two with a single pole through the middle though, it was prone to wobble if lightly touched, which obviously ruins the shot slightly. So it's not tripod solid with just one c-stand and a camera attached.

I was pleasantly surprised at the strong build of this item. The sturdy build and incredible value is excellent given it would cost a lot more for other brands. These are the huge plus's. The only minus's are the inability to compact to a smaller size and the weight being quite heavy. That said, while it may be unsuitable as a handy carry-around it would certainly be an excellent addition to any studio.

I bought one of these not so long ago and one of the knuckles gave in the other day, the arm just fell off, luckily there was no light on it. It could have landed on someone's head.The thread inside the knuckles is very weak and the thread comes away after some uses, rendering the knuckle useless and dangerous.Very poor build quality.