Mistakes Made – Lessons Learned?

[nickjohnson]

A cautionary tale:- tripods, ball heads & retail opportunities.

As previously related in these hallowed pages I had to buy a high capacity ball head to take the load of all my close up kit, mounted on my tripod.

fstop-cafe.proboards.com/thread/3488/focus-rail-german-shock-horror

Later I added a different tripod (it has a feature that looked good). Both have been a poor purchase decision for me. Please note – there is nothing wrong with the products – I just made poor purchase decisions.

How So? The tripod I got has twist lock legs. The FLM ball head has locking / tension set with twist knobs. There is nothing wrong with these – most of the products on the market are built this way. But I HATE them. Twist locks on the tripod legs are slow to lock / unlock, and you have no visual idea about the lock status. Same deal with the ball head. Put a reasonable (not excessive) load on it – adjust the tension – fine. Move the angle a reasonable amount and the effective load increase overcomes the tension – so twiddle the tension knob. Go to adjust the angle and find that the ball is locked solid, so more knob twiddling to unlock. End up forgetting the tension adjustment – just lock and unlock, rinse and repeat – you end up spending more time knob twiddling than taking pictures. No good.

What to do? I discovered that what I though was a terminal problem with my old tripod, turned out to be an easy, non intuitive adjustment. Great – my old Manfrotto has tab (or leaver) leg locks. If a tab is sticking out it's unlocked – push and click – it's locked. I've now mounted a Manfrotto ball head – with leaver locks for the ball and pan. The lock for the ball is less than half a turn on the leaver. No twiddling no fuss no uncertainty. Job done – back to taking pictures.

[clactonian]

I can sympathise Nick having made a similar mistake, not so much with the tripod, although my Manfrotto is quite bulky and heavy, but certainly over the head. I bought a Manfrotto pistol grip head with the tripod thinking this would give me the fast adjustment that I sought, but despite the stated weight capacity I found it totally incapable of supporting my D2Xs and a heavy lens such as a Sigma 150mm macro. It just slips. I resorted to a fairly basic, and cheap, 1 1/4 inch ball head which does the job even though it has those dreaded knobs.

[chrisc]

I've been using an Oben tripod & Head for the last two years. It does have the dreaded twist lock legs but for such a lightweight tripod (carbon fiber), it supports my D810 and 80-400 effortlessly.