What Vibration Does A Wood Tripod Dampen And Why Does It Matter?

[Vaughn]

Yes, the head is important, I would say equally as important.. While a heavy beast on a heavy beast of a pod, the Ries double tilt head is a fine platform for my 8x10. Relatively low profile (keeping the camera near the apex formed by the legs) and a large platform for the camera to attach to (metal to wood in my case).

In a studio or flatland situation where the camera could be kept very close to level, going without the head altogether would most likely be the most stable set-up...but impractical in the field for me as I often have the camera tilted up or down beyond the rise/fall capabilities of the camera and coverage of the lens.

Vaughn

[Nicholas F. Jones]

In defense of metal (the OP inquired about the supposed superiority of wood), I can offer the extreme case of my own personal experience with the Nikon 1200T, the longest currently available (until recently) LF lens with a FFD of 755.7mm or 29 and 3/4 inches.

I shoot with a 5x7 back on my Tachihara 8x10 triple extension. Manfrotto-Bogen 3036/3236 with the 3057 heavy duty head. I use the M-B 3252 long lens camera support to hold up and stiffen the front bed when fully extended. (I try to apportion the total cantilevering proportionally over the three extensions, but even so each bed is extended almost to the limit of its effectiveness).

Many of my exposures (on Tri-X) are 1 sec. @ f64, although occasionally faster up to 1/4 sec. In reciprocity situations I've gone as long as 4 secs or so. I use a short 9" cable release.

I don't even attempt a shot with the 1200T except under optimal conditions, i.e. no wind or sheltered from same, no nearby vehicular traffic, etc. The surface is sometimes a lawn, sometimes concrete or asphalt.

It's a very heavy, solid system, and the conditions are as close to optimal as I can manage. On a light table with a 4x loupe, a high percentage of the negatives are acceptably sharp and a few are as good as anything I've produced on the same system with much shorter lenses. So I'm inclined to conclude that the causes of my blurred negatives over the years do not include the fact that my tripods (and long lens support) are made of metal.

[EdWorkman]

Damping is achieved quickly with non-linear material(s)in the load path- That's engineer-speak for the use of, say, neoprene pads between buildings and their foundations- or "seismic isolation" . Way back in these posts use of "thick spongy pads" under lab instruments was mentioned-quite similar. So perhaps a 1/4 inch thickness of neoprene on a large tripod support surface would work well, or a coupla layers of old wet-suit, well tightened down .
Another approach is to support the instruments on something of [relatively] high mass and stiffness. Folks at research laboratories like really thick concrete floors for mass, in combination with short spans to increase the stiffness more than thickness alone cuz mass also makes seismic forces higher.
Unlike with buildings, you folks can easly test your results and go back to the wet suit for more layers.
Dampening is very cheap, initially, as a quart of water will provide lots of havoc in that area.
More than you wanted to know

[Drew Wiley]

I actually sell lasers and tripods, among the many hats I wear to make a living. For student and casual use metal tripods are popular because they're cheap and lightweight. Most are made in China. There are also made in China clones of brand-name wooden tripods which look nice and are relatively cheap but perform horribly.
But around here I never see a professional surveyor with a theodolite using anything but a substantial clad wooden tripod. And these do perform as decent large-format camera supports too, though I'd rather use my Ries. As far as the spotting scope and bird-watcher crowd is concerned, I'm out at Point Reyes all the time, and those guys admire my big Ries tripod, though most probably wouldn't want to deal with the weight. I gave one of my old wooden surveyor tripods to a friend for a small astronomical telescope and it works far better than the metal one which came with it.
But everything is relative. I don't think I ever got a blurred exposure using my old metal
Gitzo or my new carbon-fiber Gitzo. But around the coast here where the wind can be
incessant, I prefer wood. Common sense. With the Pentax 6x7 and a very long lens
things are much more critical than with the 8x10, and it's either Ries or failure,
especially since the negative has to be enlarged so much more. This whole discussion
is meaningful in my opinion, but by no means does everyone need a wooden tripod.
Many view cameras are quite easy to stabilize.

[Brian Ellis]

Thanks for all the responses, there's certainly a lot of food for thought in them. I haven't read them all carefully but I've read some carefully and at least skimmed all of them. I have only a couple comments or clarifications.

With respect to sources of vibration other than the shutter tripping - e.g. pulling the dark slide, setting the aperture, wind, etc. - while all of these no doubt can set up vibrations, they can normally be dealt with in ways other than by carrying a wood tripod. The only potential source of vibration I can think of offhand that can't be dealt with in any other way is the shutter tripping. That's why in my original post I mentioned that as a source. I probably should have also clarified that I wasn't interested in the benefits of a wood tripod in dealing with other sources that usually can be dealt with without carrying a wood tripod.

I have no doubt that in general wood dampens vibrations better than metal and other materials used to make tripods. So it comes as no surprise that if I tap metal or CF legs with a finger nail I'm going to notice more or longer vibrations than with wood. But of course we don't do that when we photograph. My question was what vibrations that can't be controlled in other ways (e.g. by waiting a while to make the photograph after pullling a dark slide) does a wood tripod dampen (recognizing that I wasn't as clear as I could have been with the original post).

Again, thanks very much for all the thoughtful reponses.

[Struan Gray]

A final thought: one reason wood tripods can seem so dead with large cameras is the way the legs attach to the crown. The wide attachment typical of classical wooded tripods certainly helps prevent some sorts of motion. This sort of wide attachment is usually only found in metal and CF tripods intended for surveying instruments or large film and video cameras.

A similar point can be made about heads. The stiff-hinge, large mating surface heads like the Ries two-way head or the Sinar pan-tilt head I have may not be any better than other heads at resisting the small torque, high frequency vibrations of small camera shutters, but are much better at dealing with the large torque, low frequency case of a large camera in a wind. My B1 ballhead is fine with a 250 on 6x6, but merely adequate with a 420 on 4x5.

[Phil O.]

I used a Davis and Sanford tripod for several years in my early days of shooting 4X5 and medium format. There have been times where I photographed along streams and rivers where I had to place one or more of the legs in the current to get the shot I wanted. And it bothered the heck out of me to have to do that, as I'd place my hand on a leg and feel for the vibration from being in the current. If it seemed like too much, I'd relocate the tripod to reduce the vibration, or at times give up on the shot.

To help overcome that occassional problem, I bought a Bromwell (Berlebach) Tilt Sentry, and later a Brom Master (Uni) for my 8X10. And it seemed to me that there was a noticable difference in cutting down the vibration between the aluminum versus wood tripods when placed in a current.

To what degree there was a difference I suppose is partly subjective, when taking into consideration wanting to justify the extra expense and also wanting the problem to be at least partly solved.

But at the very least, the Bromwell/Berelebach tripods I own are real purty to look at! :-)

[toyotadesigner]

Post from Bob Salomon: Then there is this. Which is now coming to market. Vibration is reduced by 50% by the use of a 4th leg:

Huh. A *TRI*pod with 3 legs will stand rock solid on almost any uneven surface - ever tried to do that with 4 legs? How often have you experienced tables in restaurants (outdoor, garden restaurants) with 4 legs that are not sturdy? You can check for yourselft or ask an engineer which solution is better on a variety of surfaces - a 3 point or a 4 point connection.

The answer is clear.

As much as I appreciate German products and Novoflex I really wondered about their marketing gag with the 4 leg tripod.

[Bob Salomon]

Huh. A *TRI*pod with 3 legs will stand rock solid on almost any uneven surface - ever tried to do that with 4 legs? How often have you experienced tables in restaurants (outdoor, garden restaurants) with 4 legs that are not sturdy? You can check for yourselft or ask an engineer which solution is better on a variety of surfaces - a 3 point or a 4 point connection.

The answer is clear.

As much as I appreciate German products and Novoflex I really wondered about their marketing gag with the 4 leg tripod.

But tables don't have a joint at the top of the leg to level it on any surface. With the Quadropod you set any three legs on the surface needed and then push the 4th lrg in so it is rock solid on any ground, or mounted to a window or to shelves.

[Nicholas F. Jones]

In my previous post I approached the question whether wood dampens vibrations better than other materials used in camera supports by adducing a particular extreme case (a 1200mm telephoto lens on a 8x10 folding field camera). Even though it's only a single configuration, precisely because it is extreme it might for all I know shed light on less extreme configurations. Besides, having no technical knowledge or understanding whatever in this area I'm not about to add to the confusion by introducing uninformed speculations.

The implications of my particular case come down to this: having removed all the usual controllable sources of vibration (except, possibly, that conceivably caused by the use of a short cable release), I consistently get sharp negatives in a situation (extreme bellows extension) where blurring is a common result. I speak from the experience of my repeated failed attempts to get a sharp negative with the 450M mounted on my Canham 5x7 woody--a camera designed for wide angle lenses which does give me beautifully sharp negatives all the way down to 72mm; again, the tripod--a smaller, less stable M-B--is made of metal. Previous posters write about torque; unless I'm badly mistaken, that's what's at issue here.

The one obvious qualitative difference between the contrasting performances of the 450M on my Canham 5x7 and of the 1200T on my Tachihara 8x10 is the use of the (metal) long lens support on the M-B (metal) 3036/3236. The support attaches to the forward leg of the tripod and screws into the bottom of the leading edge of the forward-most camera bed. So it's still a three-point system as opposed to four (with a monopod in front) or six (with a second tripod in front), both of which I considered and dismissed in favor of the M-B 3252.

For all I know, wood DOES dampen vibrations better than metal, but whatever the truth may be regarding materials my real-world all-metal support system yields satisfactory results under extreme conditions. I strongly suspect that it's the lens support arm that makes the difference since it not only holds up the sagging bed(s) but even more importantly stiffens and stabilizes when cinched up and locked down. That is, it may help to minimize any vibrations set in motion by my inherently unstable all-metal system.