My New Tripod: Gitzo vs Leica Surveyor vs Ries

[Bernice Loui]

Heh, if the possible image is more than a few hundred feet from the motor vehicle .. that would be a no.
Alternative, wheeled trail cart which has become a fashionable thing today for folks wanting to do no with a back pack.

The TK23s has a modified old tyme airport luggage rack to wheel the TK23s in case around with tripod as needed.

The 5x7 Norma has a Pelican case with wheels..

Highly favor pavement..


Walking distance access to many hiking trails here, yet no real interest in hiking in these trails in the community's "back yard"..

Bernice


[QUOTE=Drew Wiley;1654903
But for every other situation, it's back to a real wood Ries and a Norma monorail.

[/QUOTE]

[r.e.]

Aka notch sensitivity. CF can be made/spun/wound to greatly reduce this well known problem. This is also a very serious problem with CF bicycle frames. A small notch or stress fracture can cause a catastrophic failure.

Yes, but carbon fibre is much more reliable than it once was.

I have as much reason as anybody to be circumspect about the material. Years ago, the BBC interviewed my crew mates and I after an RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institute) lifeboat crew towed us and our high-tech, very expensive racing catamaran into Hartlepool. The BBC was doing a story about the lifeboat station, and who should conveniently come along to be rescued? Us. Why? We were headed for the English Channel to try to set a Cross-Channel record when our carbon fibre mast suddenly sheared right off just above the deck... in 5 knots of wind Pretty embarrassing, but not particularly uncommon with racing sailboats at the time. The owner (I was just crewing) was lucky that the lifeboat crew agreed not to cut the sails loose, because they cost a fortune. The old stories about carbon fibre failure can be entertaining, but carbon fibre manufacturing has come a long way in the last twenty years or so.

I won't use a clamp on carbon fibre tripod legs, but otherwise I don't worry about them.

[Michael Wellman]

I have a carbonfiber tripod (don't recall the brand) that I use for my SLRs and occasionally for 4x5, but my preference is still for the Rise tripods and heads when I use my 8x10 and ULF. A ball head I find difficult to use with heavier camera's and they are simpler to use. The articulating legs and how the legs are extended I find better as well. Not to mention the fact that you are dealing with wood.

[Drew Wiley]

Ha, Bernice! The definition of a trail seems to vary quite a bit on this forum. In my dictionary, if a cart can even get ten yards down one, it ain't a real trail, but a road. Of course, I have long preferred backpacking off trail, but do need to stick with some sort of trail more often as my driver's license keeps reminding me that I'm officially senior citizen age now, and am even gradually beginning to feel like one. Pelican cases? All that extra weight for nothing? And I've seen them crack with just a minor drop once the temp gets down around zero. The only thing I have in common with that kind of hard container lugging is that I'm stupid enough to be my own pack mule in the backcounty. Come to think of it, the mules are probably smarter. Did my 16th summer cowboying with an outfitter, but prefer the freedom of my own two feet over mules, horses, and llamas. None of the above modes of transportation comes equipped with wheels. But there's a new law coming into effect which demands that by the end of the decade, all transport livestock will have to be strictly electric. So new battery motor replacements should alleviate any aging knee or foot issues.

[r.e.]

Received the new tripod this afternoon, a Ries J100-2. I'll post about why I chose it over the other options, and how it performs, over the next few days.

I'll be trying out the approaches to camera attachment discussed in post #22. I also have a Ries Double Tilt Head (J250), which is currently in another country. If I decide that I need it, I'll have it sent to me. However, I'm pretty interested in getting this tripod to work with the Miller fluid head, for use with both my photography cameras and Blackmagic Cinema Camera. I think that the Ries would be an awesome support for the Blackmagic for pans, tilts and subject follows.

This is a good time to thank @Bernice Loui for talking with me about a couple of the options, and especially about what's involved in modifying a surveyor tripod.

Specifications

Material: Wood
Crown: 10cm (4”)
Maximum height: 152cm (62”)
Minimum height: 30.5cm (12”)
Maximum load: 29.5kg (65lb)
Folded length: 102cm (40”)
Weight (with bronze rather than aluminium knobs): 5kg (11lb)

Price: $718, more with certain hardware options and wood selections


Phone Snaps

Tripod (first leg section extended):




Crown:

[r.e.]

Don't want to get ahead of myself, but I'll make two observations now.

I think that this tripod is going to be easy to level from the legs. I'm sufficiently confident that I'm not going to have the Ries head referred to in the post above sent to me. I want to get fast at levelling this tripod without a head.

Secondly, I'm confident that the tripod will work well with a Riser (see post #21). Indeed, while Ries doesn't show Risers on its website, or even mention them, it sells Risers for use with its tripods. Someone talked about ProMediaGear in an earlier post. It makes the Riser (High Hat in filmmaker lingo) that I use, and that's shown in post #21: PMG 75mm High Hat. Ries's High Hat is shown in post #38 below.

By the end of the weekend, I want this tripod and my Miller fluid head working smoothly together


Levelling the new tripod with a Machinist Level (pretty straightforward, not rocket science):

[Tin Can]

I have a vintage walnut Ries Model C, a lighter tripod, same design

I prefer using spikes in grass with old wood cameras

[r.e.]

I'm adding the photo below because it isn't on Ries's website. I learned about the component and the photo during a discussion with Ries owner Spencer.

It's the Riser/High Hat that Ries sells for its tripods. It's aluminium, made by a company in California that makes gear for cinematography, and apparently available for 65mm, 75mm and 100mm bowls. It would work with both a levelling base and fluid head.

My understanding is that Ries tripods were in fairly common use as motion picture tripods at one time. I think that camera operators using a Ries tripod, at least as they are currently designed, probably would have been interested in a Riser/High Hat like this starting sometime in the early 1950s, if not sooner. The fluid head was invented, if I recall by an Australian whose design Miller heads were originally based on, in the late 1940s. The tripod design also suggests a long history of Ries tripods being levelled from the legs, not from a tripod head. Ries legs are a lot like surveyor tripod legs. Except for some high precision fine tuning at the end, surveyor tripods are levelled from the legs.

[r.e.]

I've rotated the photos from Bernice Loui's post #27. The photos show her modified Dutch Hill Surveyor Tripod supporting a Sinar Norma.

[r.e.]

My reasons for passing on the Gitzo Series 5 tripod...

Specifications for the Gitzo are in post #1.

The attraction of the Gitzo is that it would have been a complete replacement for my Series 3 tripod (G1325 MK II; the current version is GT3533LS). What's the difference between the two? The Series 5 offers a larger crown (90mm vs 70mm) and larger leg diameters. However, it doesn't offer much more mass (it's a bit less than 450g/1lb heavier). Given the cameras that I use (see post #1), I think that the upgrade, in real terms, would not have been very significant.

The upgrade felt particularly thin given the price of $1200. Because the standard bowl for this tripod is 100mm, I'd also need a special Gitzo 75mm bowl for its Series 5 tripods, at an additional cost of $140. Total: $1340 plus $120 sales tax = $1460. This is a lot more money than the other two options. I don't think that sale of my Series 3 tripod, which is no longer made, would offset the cost of the Series 5 enough to make the price attractive.

Finally, I was interested in getting away from the restrictions that carbon fibre tripods place on control over leg position. These limit the placement of a carbon fibre tripod on terrain, and make levelling a carbon fibre tripod without a head more difficult, compared to a surveyor tripod or a tripod, like the Ries, that works similarly to a surveyor tripod.