Dampening Tripods

[Peter De Smidt]

I've recently been experimenting with telescopes and panoramic heads, both of which ruthlessly reveal vibration problems in the support system.

My main tripod is a Gitzo tele studex, a standard hollow aluminum tube model. Luckily, I also have a 1970s version, which would make a good test mule. I've been thinking about trying a couple of things.

Idea 1: use a two part expanding polyurethane foam in the bottom leg sections and the center column. Something like what is shown at: http://www.tapplastics.com/shop/product.php?pid=79 This would put a light, moisture resistant foam inside the lowest tubes and center column, which should help dampen vibrations without adding much weight.

Idea 2. Paint the upper tube sections with a vibration dampening paint, such as Spectrum, which you can see at: http://www.secondskinaudio.com/store.php?category=121 Not only would this dampen some vibrations, but it'd be a nice insulator from the cold metal.

Thoughts?

[Frank Petronio]

What about good old-fashioned sandbags? Hollywood uses them.

It seems to me that ultimately you need to modify the surface the tripod is on. If it's on a hard rock surface, you may need a rubber mat. Or moist soil.

You could of course, bury the lower legs of the tripod into the ground!

[Archphoto]

I just wonder if some kind of dampening material on top of your head would even work better.

Look at NORAD how they solved the dampening problems in parts of it.
You would put an inch thick rubber spacer between head and camera and you will need a longer camera screw with rubber washer, so you isolate the camera from the tripod.
Having a large quick release plate on top of the head would help, I am looking at my Manfrotto 410 geared head right now, the plate of the 804RCII would be too small for it.

Dampening the bottom legs of the old Gitzo (I have one and love it) would help to dampen the vibration of the legs or at least change it's frequency.
The same with the dampening paint on the top sections.

How usefull it will be greatly depends on where the vibrations are comming from: the wind or the ground.
Soft soil tends to have more vibrations than rock, esp if you have heavy trafic closeby.

Peter

[Jim C.]

I'm not too sure that filling your tripod legs with the rigid urethane foam would do
I build large sculptured pieces for film & television using that foam and that stuff
definitely wont dampen vibrations, unless its a foot or more thick. If anything I think
it will attenuate the vibrations.

Not sure about the paint, but it it might be worth a try.

There is a material called Sorbothane, it's a polyurethane sheet that dampens vibrations
I've seen it used as audiophile turntable feet and it's available from McMaster Carr
it may work sandwiched between aluminum plates as isolator for your camera from your tripod.

[PenGun]

I got into photography from telescopes. I wanted to take astro photos and ended up just doing the photography.

I built a telescope mount out of a 8' length of 4" steel tube and sunk it into a meter square of concrete with random steel tubing, pipes and angle iron driven through that, before it set, into the ground.

Hung my Astrophysics 130mm f6 StarFire on that. Lovely thing, a full apo refractor. Waited 8 months and coughed up many grand.

No movement at all. You could smack the pipe with a hammer and she was sharp in just a second or so. Now for a telescope you don't have to move the mount if you find a good place. I have on occasion wished my photographic mounts were that solid.

[Vaughn]

A wood tripod? (ducking and running away)...:D

Vaughn

[BrianShaw]

Less caffeine???

[evan clarke]

I have 3 Gitzos of the same size, one aluminum and two carbon, my user is the newest, a 3540 XLS. The dimensions on this are identical to the aluminum one I have but the carbon one is much more rigid and subject to way less vibration. I do lots of 3 minute exposures for slow water and the subject is always sharp...Evan Clarke

[Frank Petronio]

I always thought the heavier aluminum Gitzos would be better than the CF too but I was wrong. Save your nickels and get a big CF beast to start with...

[Preston]

To dampen your tripod, use the following procedure:

1. Set up tripod and ensure the legs are locked tightly.
2. Use any available liquid to lightly coat your tripod.
3. Install camera on tripod.
4. Repeat the coating process in step 3 to ensure the tripod is dampened adequately.

Notes: Do not use your favorite alcoholic beverage, since you will need it after reading this post. If you have consumed too much caffeine, a sufficient quantity of wetting agent is readily available; just be sure you apply this agent from up-hill and up-wind.

:-)

-Preston

[Nathan Potter]

Tripod vibrations can be very complex. Essentially a tripod is a crappy way to achieve vibration free mounting of optical devices. But that's what we have to work with - although I've found heavy picnic benches are very good. But often the largest tripod head displacements are the result of resonances within some parts of the tripod or support system.

Now a basic principle of head displacement says that the higher the resonant frequency the less the displacement. Also the heavier the mass of the support system the less the displacement. So one can use these two notions to reduce vibration. Of course it really depends on what part of the support system is producing vibration - is it really the tripod or the device attached to it. Other posts here have suggested a plethora of innovative solutions which, in effect, reduce the resonant frequency of the tripod. Usually the problem is associated with the legs of the tripod. So:

1. Try to use as short of a leg extension as possible (higher vibration frequency).
2. Increase the weight of the tripod (use a bag of rocks suspended from the center
post).
3. Use bungee cord wrap around the tripod legs. (reduces the vibration period of the
legs so reduces displacement).
4. Shield the setup from vibration source of energy - the wind or ground shake.
5. Use auxillary support in addition to the tripod such as monopods.
6. For certain applications the use of bean bags or the equivalent function very well
and allow for limited adjustment of the optical device.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.:) :)

[rdenney]

To dampen your tripod, use the following procedure:

As a new member, I didn't want to go there, despite that my engineering brain was about to explode. Thank you.

Rick "who uses limp mass to damp vibrations and a garden hose to dampen soil, which makes a good limp mass" Denney

[Alan Davenport]

I once turned around to get into my bag and bumped the tripod with my caboose, knocking it and the camera over into a stream. That's about as dampened a tripod as I've ever seen... :o

Fortunately, I was reaching to the bag for a lens, so at least that wasn't on the camera yet. Still, it took hours to dry things off.

[Peter De Smidt]

Thanks for all of the suggestions. Currently, I'll have to stick to the tripods that I have. I've wanted to adapt some surveyor tripod style feet for my Gitzo for awhile, and so maybe I'll give that a try. I definitely need to be able to remove them. I'll also experiment with some materials to fill the center column/lower leg sections with. I like the huge steel pipe mounted in cement idea for telescope mounting, but that'll have to wait until I live in a better location.

Frank, I have some of the professional style sand bags on the way. They do work well, assuming one is able to carry them to the location. "Hey Janice. Could you carry these for me? It's only a couple of miles..."

[Jeff Conrad]

I think Nate summarizes it pretty well. A camera/tripod combination is a resonant system that's very dependant on the camera; in many cases, an 8x10 will be fine when a smaller camera is not. The older aluminum Gitzos are very poorly damped (as Ansel Adams noted years ago); my 412 has a tendency to "sing" in the wind with almost any size camera mounted. It has spike feet; pushing them firmly into the ground helps quite a bit, as does avoiding extending any leg section completely (i.e., leave a couple inches of overlap to decrease flexure at the joints).

It's probably someone akin to the turntable support debates of 25 years ago. On one side were the proponents of the rigid-base Japanese turntables like Denon and Pioneer; they worked best with massive, absolutely rigid platforms, such as heavy furniture or even a concrete pillar that came through a hole the enthusiast had cut in the floor. On the other side were spring-suspended turntables like Thorens and Linn, which worked best with very light stands. A camera/tripod combination is probably somewhere in between. The point? It's a system rather than two individual components.

Sand bags certainly help, but of course you need to carry them. Years ago, I used a tripod apron that I would fill with rocks, and this worked to about the same effect. The apron was attached to the middle leg sections, so it also served to limit the displacement (and the vibration amplitude) of the legs. But rocks aren't always available, and in some cases picking them up makes a mess of things, so hanging a camera bag from the tripod apex may be a better solution. I usually use an adjustable loop of tubular nylon webbing to have the bag just touch the ground so that it doesn't pendulum.

Carbon fiber is probably the easiest solution, but it doesn't help if you're not in the market for a new tripod.

It's possible that some of the various damping techniques discussed will help, but as Nate implied, it's crapshoot. I was amazed at how effect cardboard tubes in driveshafts were in reducing truck noise (the driveshaft usually worked as an amplifying device for transmission noise). Whether urethane would do the same for a tripod is uncertain; I'm guessing it wouldn't do all that much.

Various decoupling schemes might reduce vibration from some sources (such as the ground) but could exacerbate the effect of other sources such as wind or even jarring from a cable release. I'm skeptical of something like a rubber mat in most cases; although it might reduce ground-induced vibration, it might also make for a pretty bouncy setup. For example, the hard rubber Gitzo feet are notorious for sliding on marble floors, but bounce they don't. The softer feet on many other tripods are less given to sliding, but some are so soft that even getting near the tripod seems to cause camera motion. It's all a matter of tuning, and it may be possible to get a setup that's optimal for most conditions, but it might require a lot of work. I'd try some of the simpler, reversible things before getting fancy.

The best way to test would be to use an accelerometer and a scope, but most people (myself included) don't have these handy. As a cheap, easy alternative, you can observe quite a bit by looking at the groundglass while tapping a leg, and confirm the more promising possibilities with images. A simple test like this very quickly shows the effects of weights, leg overlap, and CF legs.

[Terence McDonagh]

As a new member, I didn't want to go there, despite that my engineering brain was about to explode. Thank you.

Rick "who uses limp mass to damp vibrations and a garden hose to dampen soil, which makes a good limp mass" Denney

Your fellow engineers feel your pain . . .

[emo supremo]

1. Can anyone relate their experience with a spreader? Yesterday I saw a contraption that folded up (portable). the feet of a tripod were jam nutted. I couldn't make out whether it's purpose was to prevent pointed metal feet from inscribing parkay flooring or to add stability to the tripod. anyone know?

PORTABLE SPREADER FOR RIES ZONE VI MITCHELL TRIPOD NR Item number: 280338947958

there's a similar one for Bogen 3155 Lightweight Spreader for Tripod Manfrotto Item number: 300274966099

2. Has anyone tried placing a strut from the camera leg to the tip(s) of the baseboard. I viscerally dislike the base of the camera affixed by a dainty 3/8 inch screw and the leverage the front of the camera has on this pivot point gives it dictator's power. All these tripods are like shooting a pistol when you ought to be thinking rifle. I think (think, dont know) that brodening that pivot point by to vertical struts coming up from two of the legs ought to make it stable. Put a little yin and yang in them opposing forces. Any telescope people care to comment?

This smacks of the figure on page 47 of how to use a monopod (Ernst WILDI third edition) to wit, "The steadiest position for a monpod is when it forms a third leg....and the camera is pushed firmly against the face.....two forces oppose each other, which is not the case when the monopod is vertical."


3. I like the isolation strategy proferred in the last threads. We have balances that measure fractions of milligrams and they are on marble (massive weight) but resting on on massive legs but rather rubber! Michaelson and Morley floated their equipment in a vat of mercury to eliminate vibrations. Is there a lesson to be learned in these anecdotes? Someday I'm going to cut a tripod in half and put shock absorbers in between the three cut legs. But before I do, I'm going to try using bamboo.

[Peter De Smidt]

I've ordered some Spectrum vibration damping coating. See: http://www.secondskinaudio.com/sound-deadener/spectrum.php?category=121

I'm going to coat my DIY panorama head with it. If that works well, I'll investigate coating various surfaces of my older tripod and head with it.

It's pretty pricey, but I plan on also using it in the wheel wells of my wife's Honda Civic, which has quite a bit of road noise.