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

Started Jun 17, 2019 | Discussions thread
Eric Nepean
Eric Nepean Veteran Member • Posts: 6,209
Re: What tripod do you use and aren't many identical?

Jorginho wrote:

What would you call "flashy"? Flashy is not what interests me. Just good or on this case "value for money".

Hmm Flashy.

For example many popular tripods now come with a center column that can rotated to a right angle. Sinds like a great idea, untill you use it. I discovered that even with a rather big heavy tripod like the Manfrotto 055XProB weighing 3.6Kg, rated for 7KG, if I rotated the center column to horizontal and put about 750g of camera +lens on it, it had a strong tendency to vibrate.

Nice looking feature, but gives poor results unless handled very carefully.

If you want to put a camera over top of something, you get a much better result by using the tried and true method of exteending thee legs a good ways, reversing the center column, the tripod head goes between the tripod legs, and is then rotated so that the camera faces down.

Tripods have had the reversible column feature for many years.

Another example is a tripod that has one leg that becomes a monopod. Nice idea, but the attachment for the leg which becomes a monopod is never as strong and rigid as the other leg attachments, and compromises the stiffness of the tripod.

Unless the tripod is quite tall the monopod leg will be rather short (or have extra sections). IMO not a great monopod either.

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Cheers
Eric

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