The product design geniuses over at Peak Design are back with another new piece of gear for your photography and videography needs: the Travel Tripod, which they're aiming to have Kickstarted. Well, I say "aiming" but they've already hit the $3.5 million mark after asking for $500K, so I'd say it's pretty much a done deal at this point.

The full-featured Travel Tripod solves a decades-old issue with typical travel tripods by eliminating half the storage volume (read: dead space) for maximum portability, without losing out on functionality you'd expect to have in the field. See it in action:

The cam levers that run along each of the three legs make the tripod super quick and easy to set up and take down, with the bonus benefit of being able to tell at a glance which legs/sections are secured in place. The ball head mount offers a good amount of articulation, making it easy to drop the camera sideways for portraits or otherwise adjust your aim as needed.

One of the neater features is the universal phone mount hidden within the center column. When stowed away, it acts as a hook for you to hang stuff from. And let's not forget that when the whole thing is collapsed, you can actually carry the tripod in your backpack's water bottle pocket!

There's a lot more to the Travel Tripod than I can reasonably cover here, so I suggest checking out the Kickstarter page and see if it's a project you'd want to support before it hits the market. Backing at the $289 level will get you the anodized aluminum alloy version (below, left), while $479 will net you the ultralight carbon fiber model (below, right).