Light Tripods: The Weak Link?

[Bob Salomon]

All wood is not the same and it's a serious mistake to believe that they are. You will not find any ash violins, guitars, violas, pianos, etc., and there's a reason for that. You will, however find, I believe, that wood tripods are almost exclusively made of woods that no violin maker in his right mind would touch with a ten-foot pole.

And all metals are not the same as are all shapes that aluminum tripod legs may take!

Take a good close look at the leg of a Linhof Light Weight Pro tripod.
First, the leg material is duralumin, an aircraft grade aluminum.
Then the front face of the leg is arced, it is not flat and it is not circular shaped, it then bends on each edge for added strength and rigidity. Any vibration, if any, is dampened out much faster then legs of any material, in any shape of similar or heavier weight.

[Tin Can]

Most of us have a good number of tripods.

No point in selling any as shipping is now too high.

My first real tripod was a Benbo No1 made in England. Really goofy to use, but can be configured almost infinitely.

Probably bought it as they use 'whist' in the instructions.

[Bob Salomon]

All wood is not the same and it's a serious mistake to believe that they are. You will not find any ash violins, guitars, violas, pianos, etc., and there's a reason for that. You will, however find, I believe, that wood tripods are almost exclusively made of woods that no violin maker in his right mind would touch with a ten-foot pole.

You had best google for tonewoods. You will find that ash is a hardwood used for electric guitars. Ries states on their web site that most of their tripods are made from tonewoods.

Berlebach uses ash.

[Peter De Smidt]

Is not hard maple used in string instruments? Ok, so it’s not the sound board, but wood does vibrate.

[Pere Casals]

Any material vibrates... Another thing is how the vibration is damped in a material.

Damping usually would be better in a wood tripod than in a metallic one.

[mdarnton]

I just want to comment that all I said was that I did a direct comparison between two similar sized and weighted tripods, with the same head and plate, one metal and one wood. I would welcome others to do similar comparisons. Then we would have real data rather than a bunch of opinions based on what people think should happen.

[Bob Salomon]

I just want to comment that all I said was that I did a direct comparison between two similar sized and weighted tripods, with the same head and plate,one metal and one wood. I would welcome others to do similar comparisons. Then we would have real data rather than a bunch of opinions based on what people think should happen.

Since I marketed Linhof, Berlebach, Novoflex, Giottos Bilora, and Rollei tripods whose legs were made of duralumin, aluminum, ash, carbon fiber, basalt. I have had some experience comparing these. In my studio I had also used the largest Davis Sanford, Majestic, Star D, Tiltall, and some others whose names I can’t remember after all these years.

I sold tripods to major telescope manufacturers, including Questar and TeleVue.

I have seen tests of tripod vibrations ranging from Questar placing an 8” scope on various tripods on a concrete pad and having a 300lb + employee jump up and down on the pad and timing how long vibration remained in the scope. To raising tripods to the same height, with or without the column, placing a half full shot glass (water) and tapping a leg lightly and seeing how long the water moved in the glass. To Leica Magazine taping graph paper to a wall and a laser pointer on the tripod legs, pointing to the center of the graph paper, and photographing the movement of the laser beam after a small weight, tied to a string, was released to tap the leg with the pointer. To Berlebach printing the results of vibration testing by TUV on the back page of their brochure (it may be posted on their web site).

I have seen Berlebach win, Giottos win, Linhof win, that means, that depending how you test a wood, a round tube aluminum or carbon or basalt, a profile shaped aluminum can all win.

So, unless I was following action like sports or wildlife, I wait a few seconds for vibrations to settle out, even when hanging a weight beneath the tripod, before taking the picture.

If you use any tripod properly you will always get the best results, this also means that you should leave a loop in a cable release to eliminate vibration that you can transmit to the lens by having a pulled taut cable release.

[Bob Salomon]

Wow those prices are ridiculous! (Or maybe I’m a cheapo ;-)

Those two tripods could substitute as lowly columns! They have tremendous weight capacity!

Art museums used to use very heavy IR TV cameras to inspect old paintings to see what, if anything, was under the visible image. I sold many of these museums the Heavy Duty Pro tripod, the metal version Randy linked to, with a Linhof dolly, the Linhof Large Geared Column and a custom 18” long Linhof focusing stage to allow the camera to be moved left to right over the 18” length.

The reason this system was chosen was that when moving the camera up and down via the column the camera could not move left to right and when using the stage to move the camera left to right there could be no up and down motion. And, of course, no vibration while handling these very heavy cameras, especially as the column was cranked up or down or the camera moved left to right on the focusing stage.

There are other uses for what is taken as photographic purposes then what most assume, one other use for some of the Linhof tripods and larger geared and goniometric heads was fo4 positioning large things accurately, like radar antennas. Some of these items had to be able to withstand being buried in sand for months!

[Tin Can]

I will add, that when I was in a wheelchair amd sleeping on a folding Zero Gravity chair, I used my Linhof Heavy Duty Tripod with the very heavy 8X10 Color Kardon it came with as a way to transfer from one to the other.

Using a huge camera for counter balance motivated me to change chairs.

It did not move and gave me hope for another day.

I no longer need either chair and very glad of it!

[Greg]

Also have owned both, wood and not wood. Even though the wood one was a bit heavier, subjectively, much preferred carrying it over my shoulder. Think I once read that Questar recommended the not wood model, but maybe the wood model just wasn't considered by them. Used metal ones can be had for under $300 if you're patient and willing to wait till one comes along. Shipping costs can be exorbitant... On one of the ones I acquired, the seller added in $100 for shipping and handling! But because his "buy-it-now" price was under $200, in the end it was still a great a bargain. Bob's? quote of louping the shutter release cord to prevent vibration was one of the first things that I learned at RIT when taking their LF class.