What tripod do you use and aren't many identical?

Jorginho wrote:

Hi I recently bought me a Rollei Traveller tripod. Nice, light and easy to use. Good for traveling. I have an E-M1.2 and a GH4 so they tend to be less heavy than their DSLr counterparts.

But I shoot timelapse with the GH4 and pics with the E-M1.2 on quite a few occassions (say noctilucent clouds). So I like to have another one. Also: the traveller is great for light weight but it is not as stable as a heavier or may be better designed produt. After all this tripod only costed about 90 euro's or so so you can't expect too much.

So now I found a Rollei C50i (aluminium or carbon) which ahs been replaced by the C5i. Which is te exact same tripod but cheaper and comes with only one Arca plate instead of two with the 50.

Looking into this closer It seems to me they are all made by the same manufacturer and I guess it is Sirui but may be Sirui is not the manufacturer but one of them. Does not matter.

Is this true, have you noted or has someone found an article how Rollei=Mefoto=Sirui=K&F=Geekphoto etcetc. The balheads all look identical too. But are they?

I am leaning towards the carbon fiber ones like these but then again they are lightweight. The aluminium ones are about 300-400 grams heavier.

I am looking at these:

Geekphoto carbon

Zomei…

Rollei C5i carbon

Apart from that: any recommendations under 150 euro/dollar?? Thx!

Tripod performance is a very subtle topic.

One of the issues (the key issue IMO) is the tendancy for the tripod and camera to vibrate after it is disturbed (for example by your hand touching it to adjust focus). I had a big sturdy Manfrotto that would vibrate very subtly for over 6 seconds after being touched. You would not notice it unless you were carefully looking at the image in the LCD.

IMO its the vibration that is the most prevalent cause blur.

If you make a quick test of the stiffness of the assembly, you will find that the structure controls left to right movement and front to back movement fairly well, however, movements that rotate the camera and lens about the vertical axis (the center column) are not so well controllled.

If you look at the tripod design thinking as an engineer or physicist (easy for me!), the control of rotation depends a lot on strong leg joints (leg section to secttion, and leg to spider), as well as very stiff legs. The duration of vibration depends on the damping in the system, how quickly energy is absorbed, which is materials choice. Properly chosen Carbon Fiber can damp vibrations better than aluminum.

There is a website where the author reports measurements of the tendency of various tripod models to vibrate. I highly reccomend a review of his findings.

The Center Column