New Tilta Tripods Put to the Test – All Four at Once!

Tilta, known for their cinema accessories, is expanding further into tripods with the new 75mm CT12 and CT08, the VT05 Travel Tripod, and the VT03 Table Tripod. We gave the CT12 and CT08 a quick look back on the show floor at NAB 2024, and I’ve now had both for several months on various productions. It’s time for a full field review of these Tilta tripods! Details below.

First, the high capacity CT25 Tripod (which my colleague Nino first discussed at NAB 2024) has been delayed, leaving the CT12 to fend for itself for the moment as the flagship Tilta tripod. Fear not though, the Tilta team says the CT25 is still coming to market later in 2025 with a promised price tag of “$2,000”.

But I’ve also spent some time with the new and extremely affordable Tilta VT05 travel tripod and V03 tabletop tripod, and the results might surprise you. With the holidays and a few shipping delays, I’ve now had months to spend with each of these tripods on multiple shoots, and you’ll not be surprised to learn… I have thoughts.

With these four new tripods from Tilta and an overall marketplace filled with tripod options, it might be tricky to figure out which one might be right for you, so ideally I can help save you some research time with this article. So, let’s dive into a 4-part tripod Tilta review!

This review will cover the following:

• 75mm CT12 (26.5 Lbs Capacity) – $1,199
• 75mm CT08 (17.6 Lbs Capacity) – $899
• VT05 (11 Lbs Capacity) – $299
• VT03 (6.6 Lbs Capacity) – $149

First, let me say that I’m very, very picky about tripods. I spend so much time around tripods that they need to be an extension of my arms, and the moment I miss a shot because I feel like I’m fighting the tripod for some reason, is the moment where I get grumpy. It’s also a hard thing to engineer a good tripod – especially for the prices we have here. My very favorite tripods exist in the $5,000 – $10,000 range and I get that this makes me a bit of a snob, but these are also purchases that I intend to use or at least rent for years and years to come.

When I was first starting out, it was common to be handed a tripod from a dusty equipment room or a high volume industrial rental house, and I would have little choice in the matter. I still look back on those shows and feel like every tripod bump registers on screen (even if it wasn’t recognizable to the vast majority of audiences).

Fortunately, camera bodies are getting smaller and camera manufacturers haven’t sacrificed image quality to achieve those smaller body sizes. For most of my career I’ve used Mitchell base tripods or 100mm tripod heads, but 75mm tripod heads now very much have the capacity to work with my favorite mid-budget cinema cameras.

It’s impressive to me that Tilta didn’t release just one tripod to “test the waters” and instead released four tripods nearly at the same time. They are also each very different in terms of features.

All four tripods ship in soft cases that won’t survive being checked on an airplane, but you could pack them in larger Pelican-style hard cases for transport. My personal favorite and nearly indestructible tripod transport case is from a brand called HPRC – in case you are curious.

Let’s kick things off with the 75mm CT12, which is the beefiest of the bunch in terms of weight capacity – 26.5 lbs (12.02 kilos).

The CT12 Tripod – fine control & great weight capacity

On paper, the $1,199 CT12 isn’t just the leader of the pack with its weight capacity, but also for offering the most control over fine-tuning your camera movements. This ability of the CT12 to fine tune comes in the form of 10-step counterbalance, 8-steps of fluid tilt and pan drag with +90-degree and -60-degree tilt. It might sound like I’m just throwing a bunch of numbers at you, but this degree of control is meaningful when following a fast moving vehicle or animal on a long zoom lens or simply landing a repeating move during a scripted scene over multiple takes. You can set the tripod to assist your camera move and not fight you with a few simple clicks.

The CT12 worked great for me paired with a VCT plate while using a Canon C300MKIII, C500MKII and Sony FX9 on different shoots. Of course results will vary with the above camera list if you start adding heavy zooms like something from Angeniux or perhaps a heavier anamorphic prime like an Atlas Orion.

Three locking brackets on each carbon fiber leg allow you to extend the CT12 tripod to its full height of 64.8in (162.56cm). I found these brackets are the stiffest of all the models out of the box and require a good bit of strength to lock them down. However, it does provide peace of mind that they won’t slip with a camera and lens onboard; I just wish the tripod shipped with the tension a bit lower on these brackets.

The mid-level spreader can be easily removed, allowing the tripod to go lower to the ground – ideal for low-angle shots usually reserved for a high hat. Personally, I’m much more of a fan of mid-level versus ground spreaders on tripods. Please leave a comment below if you have any suggestions about why I should like ground level spreaders in general, because I have rarely had a positive experience.

Three little rubber feet cover each of the CT12 tripod feet, and I found that those rubber feet were prone to slipping off just in the course of transporting the tripod around – I wish those stayed in place a bit better. You want these rubber feet to protect floors from damage, but you can always remove them in favor of small spikey feet when filming outside on grass or sand.

The overall weight of the CT12 comes in at 17.09 lbs (7.75kg), which is a few pounds heavier versus the pricier 13.7 lbs (6.2kg) Sachtler aktiv 6/ 75mm Flowtech competition. The Sachtler also only sports a weight capacity of 17.6 lbs (7.98kg). I own the aktiv 6/75mm Flowtech tripod and the legs are a little faster to extend, but both tripods bubble level equally as fast.

I also think the Tilta CT12 legs will hold up to more impact versus the Sachtler flowtech legs, which I just saw crack on a show I’m working on after some rough handling by airport TSA agents.

The affordable price tag of the CT12 puts it firmly in an owner/operator purchasing category and not necessarily in the rental space. It will be interesting to see how the upcoming $2,000 Tilta CT25 tripod fits into the rental house world. For now, though, the CT12 is a solid tripod flagship from Tilta with just a few drawbacks, which are offset mainly by the great pricing of the system.

The CT08 Tripod – fast & light

My guess is that most people will go straight to the largest capacity Tilta tripod and start there with the CT12, but I was impressed by just how much I enjoyed working with the 10 lbs (4.5kg) CT08. In short, don’t sleep on the humble CT08 – it’s a ton of fun to use.

The $899 Tilta CT08, available in Space Grey, Forest Camo, or Snow Camo colors, has a 3-stage carbon fiber lens with no mid or lower-level spreaders. It supports a payload from 2.2 to 17.5 lbs (1 to 7.9 kg), and pay attention to that lower end of the payload, or you’ll feel like the counterbalance is fighting your camera moves.

In practice, I tend to always stay a few pounds shy of the upper-end capacity limits on all my tripods, but the CT08 feels perfect for a Sony FX3 with a beefy zoom or an FX6 or my trusty Canon C80.

In fact, the CT08 was my favorite of the bunch to use with my Canon C80, mostly because of the overall weight-to-capacity ratio. Oh, and the snow camo also looks cool as heck. Proof is below.

One thing you are losing versus the CT12 is the single locking bracket – you now need to unlock each of the three CT08 stages one at a time to extend the tripod to its full height (which doesn’t take that long). Interestingly, the CT08, at a max 5.9 ft (179.8 cm) height, can extend slightly higher than the CT12, adding to its versatility.

With the CT08, you aren’t getting quite the fine-tuned control as with the CT12 because the CT08 only gives you four levels of pan and tilt fluid drag, but there were only one or two moments while filming where I really missed those additional fine-tuned levels of control found in the CT12.

Really ask yourself if you can get away with using the CT08 versus something more expensive. At 10 lbs (4.5 kg), I liked how it felt to carry and the setup speed impressed me. That 17.5 lbs (7.9 kg) weight capacity also proved perfect for most of the mid-sized cine cameras I use these days. Only one setup I tried proved too much for the CT08 – a Sony FX9 + Teradek Prism with Angeniux EZ zoom (hey, I had to try).

From here we’ll move to the V05 and V03 – much smaller and more affordable options that lose many of the cinema focused features, but vloggers and content creators will want to pay attention to the Tilta V05 and V03.

Tilta V05 Travel Tripod

At $299, you’ll need to be realistic that you simply won’t be getting the same experience here as with the CT08, but that doesn’t mean the Tilta V05 (also referenced as a travel video fluid head occasionally) might not be useful for your projects. You do lose the fine control of being able to change the tension of your fluid or pan moves, but the smooth fluid head of the V05 did seem fine for most of my moves with a smaller camera.

It sports 3-stage carbon fiber legs with three separate locks per stage, an 11 lb (4.98kg) weight capacity and a reversible center column for hitting tough lower angle shots just 5.1 inches off the floor. The height range without reversing the center column is 9 to 63 inches (22.8 to 160cm).

The V05 feels perfect for a self-shooting vlogger or content creator in a DIY space or someone with lots of B-roll needs and a smaller mirrorless fixed lens camera. You can move very fast when the weight of this tripod is only 4.4 lbs (2kg) and you have a small camera onboard. The tripod handle also telescopes out and back in with a quick twist – again, a nice touch that can be accomplished with only one hand.

This is also a tripod you can hike up the side of a mountain with and not feel exhausted, and it breaks down into a backpack-friendly 23.2 in (58.9cm) length when closed.

To give you a sense of my perspective – I’ll be honest that my day-to-day work primarily requires something more like the CT08 or CT12, but I can appreciate that the V05 will be all you need in certain content creation fields. If you work with an APS-C camera (perhaps with a fixed lens), the V05 travel tripod feels aimed squarely at you, and you should give it a try.

V03 Tabletop Tripod

First, and maybe most importantly, the $149 V03 tripod is adorable. It feels a little like those novelty C-Stand or Apple Boxes or even small camera models that you see here or there, but this tripod actually works and has a 6.6 lbs (3kg) weight capacity. That weight capacity covers a wide range of mirrorless cameras and their smaller optics.

I’ve found a need for a tripod this size primarily for live streaming with my Sony a7Rv or SIGMA fp. I have a narrow desk in a smaller office space with minimal room for a tripod, and it often has to live right behind my MacBook Pro, almost touching the top of the screen.

In the past, my solution has been using something like the Manfrotto Pixi Mini:

My issue with tabletop tripods like the PIXI is that they either slip out of position when I need them to stay put or require too much effort to get into the right spot. I just haven’t had much luck with this type of design.

The 1.03 lbs (1.03kg) Tilta V03 packs up into a small soft case made of the same materials as all the other tripods in this review, but it’s incredibly compact to the point where you could fit a couple of them in any backpack. It has a height range of 6 to 13.7 inches (15.2 to 34.8cm). There are also a few 1/4-20 mounting points on the legs that make for great mounting points for lighting or perhaps a shotgun microphone or wireless receiver.

Of course, the V03 would also be a great solution paired with any phone, and the Tilta Khronos phone accessories system in particular would be a good fit.

The handle also telescopes out with a quick twist, and this tripod comes in the same snow white, forest green, and space gray color options.

Final thoughts – a wealth of options

Looking back – my favorite tripod of the bunch continues to be the CT08 and I have some remaining concerns about the CT12 rubber feet and the stiff locking brackets, but you can’t argue with that impressive weight capacity and smooth fluid 8-step head.

For the work that I do and the camera body types that I work with, the V05 tripod is the one I’ll likely seek out the least. Users of more V-Logging focused cameras like the Sony ZV-1F will find the V05 useful, though – that’s just not me.

It’s a gutsy thing to launch a tripod line aimed at a variety of different users in the marketplace all at once. Tilta has mostly succeeded here with compact, affordable, and stylish-looking tripods that can carry a wide variety of cameras.

Hopefully this article will help you narrow down which Tilta tripod might be the best for you and the work that you do.

What do you think? Will you be adding a Tilta tripod to your kit soon? Let us know in the comments below!