These are fantastic! Four stars only because they are so small. You must use something really heavy in them to make them the most effective. Otherwise, they are sturdy and look fantastic. I don't like ugly sandbags, so I like these sandbags that look sharp while they stabilize my equipment on a video or photo shoot. The look nice and appear sturdy enough to last well.

Just started out in photography and needed a way to keep those top-heavy light stands from toppling over. To fill these I got a 30lb bag of pea gravel (~8$)from the local big orange box and then baked it in waves on and old cookie sheet to get rid of the moisture in it before loading these up. Each one holds a good 5 cups of pea gravel per side which gives it enough heft without being too bulky with about 5 cups left over from the bag. I wanted to avoid using sand since - even with the dual zipper closure - it felt like it might slowly work out a little over time.

So far 2 of the bags have tears in the seems, and that is after sitting in the car for a couple days and no actual usage. Hopefully the other 2 hold up better.

--So far, so good. The double zippers seem to help leakage and they held up after my first couple shoots. I will update in a couple months.

We camp in our RV out in the wilderness quite a bit. It's windy out there, so we need to drive stakes into the ground to hold down things like our portable trash/recycle cans and our big woven door mat. A couple of years ago we started using heavy rocks in the bottom of our collapsible trash cans, but there aren't always good usable rocks nearby. A few months ago I got the idea to bring my own sand backs instead. I was walking by a film production and noticed these sand bags with handles and decided to give them a try. Luckily I read the reviews first and saw all the recommendations to use plastic bags inside.

My first thought was to pick up some gallon Ziploc bags and a big sack of sand from the local home improvement store, but then it occurred to me that we'd be surrounded by various types of dirt and sand at our next camp, so why buy sand? On our recent New Year camping trip, I took a bunch of these sand bags and a box of Ziploc bags along with my shovel to a nearby sandy wash. It took about ten minutes to fill them all up and they turned out perfectly! I was still kind of skeptical about using the Ziploc bags as liners, since these sand bags are kind of rubberized and would probably contain the sand just fine. But it turned out to be the wettest trip we've ever taken (probably three inches in just one storm). These bags would have been absolutely destroyed by that much rain.

Last weekend we camped again and the bags had held up just fine. Even though they had been completely soaked, the bags were perfectly dry without even any stanky odor and the sand was all intact inside.

I work for an entertainment company and I noticed someone had left some sand bags like these laying out on the lot for a couple of months. Whether it was from neglect or someone ran over them, a couple of them had torn open so I could see what was inside. Even our pro staff had used plastic bags inside. I was surprised to see that they had used dirt with so much aggregate though (more like the sand/gravel mix you'd add to cement to make concrete). I think the aggregate was so sharp that it caused the bags to wear out sooner than they should. I would make sure to only fill these with sand, not gravel.

My tripod has a tilting center column feature that I use when I need to film a top down view of my desk while shooting video. Sadly, when I tilt the center column, it messes up the center of gravity on the tripod and it tips. These weight bags work awesomely to help counteract that and bring back the center of gravity so my tripod doesn't tip over with my camera on it.

I found it easier to not use sand in these bags but a few 5 pound dumbbell weights (CAP Barbell Standard Free Weight Plate, 1-Inch, 5-Pound, Gray). These work great with the 5 pound dumbbell weights. Please note these bags do not come prefilled, so you do need to buy the weights yourself. It has been a year and I never had these bags rip on me. Honestly, I feel these bags are probably great for weight lifting training too if you are into that sort of stuff. The straps and zippers are durable. None of them broke under the weight. I tend to tie these weight bags to my tripod via heavy duty wire ties (Nite Ize Gear Tie Assortment Bag - 8 Units).

Overall, if you are in film or photography, I'd highly recommend you get these.