Tripods convince me...

Kev R

Kev R

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Can someone explain to me the benefits of a £100 plus tripod?

I have a Velbon CX640 which I have used for years, last week I though I would go and investigate what I was missing out on with not having myself a top of the line tripod such as Manfrotto etc.

I can understand that some are designed to contort into all sorts of exotic shapes for different genres of photography so I exclude the specialist ones from my question. I am talking about three legs and a mounting plate/head for the camera, even then you can pay £100 for the tripod and up to that for a head!

I tried out some really expensive tripods by using a simple test, I put my hand on the top and wobbled them to see if any gave substantially more stability than my current CX640, if they did it was marginal, all of them moved about...I expected these all singing all dancing mortgage inducing works of art to be solid and planted to the floor.

Other than weight reduction "Marginal" I don't see the point :shrug:

Kevin
 
Just think what "marginal" movement means when you have a long telephoto attached.

Or its windy.

Or the plastic quick release cracks because you cannot get the camera on tight enough to stop it moving.

Or...
 
The main benefit is not having to watch your pride and joy smash off the ground when the elcheapo tripod falls over/collapses.
 
to be honest for amature use you don't really need a tripod that expensive
 
but if you can afford, why not, gears are toys and if you like it than you want it than buy it, if you don;t feel it worth the money than you don;t buy it:)
 
My tripod allows me to move the legs independantly of each other, this means regardless of the terrain I can get my camera well supported.
My tripod head is a good quality ball head, what this meand is I can move the camera whichever way I please and when I lock that ball there is no movement at all. None. I don't have to take into account the drop which will occur on a cheap tripod/head.
I can drop my tripod down to ground level for those low down shots, but it will still take my camera up to eye level without having to do any nasty extension of a centre column.
All this while not weighing very much.

I paid for flexibility and stability. I have both.

I am an amatuar photographer, and I DO need a tripod that does all the above. Unfortunatly they are quite expensive.
 
The velbon will just bruise the theiving scum nicking your pride and joy, whereas a Manfrotto 055 series will lay the b****r out cold :D
 
hepburn said:
The velbon will just bruise the theiving scum nicking your pride and joy, whereas a Manfrotto 055 series will lay the b****r out cold :D
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Sorry guys, no matter how to try to justify the spend to yourselves hepburn is the only one who has given me a plausible reason so far :thumbs: although I am sure my Velbon packs a mean punch :D
 
RichardtheSane said:
My tripod allows me to move the legs independantly of each other, this means regardless of the terrain I can get my camera well supported.
My tripod head is a good quality ball head, what this meand is I can move the camera whichever way I please and when I lock that ball there is no movement at all. None. I don't have to take into account the drop which will occur on a cheap tripod/head.
I can drop my tripod down to ground level for those low down shots, but it will still take my camera up to eye level without having to do any nasty extension of a centre column.
All this while not weighing very much.

I paid for flexibility and stability. I have both.

I am an amatuar photographer, and I DO need a tripod that does all the above. Unfortunatly they are quite expensive.
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I will concede to that and I did say that olympic gymnast tripods were excluded ;)
 
DonnaM said:
Just think what "marginal" movement means when you have a long telephoto attached.

Or its windy.

Or the plastic quick release cracks because you cannot get the camera on tight enough to stop it moving.

Or...
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My point is that they all moved no matter how expensive, OK the really cheap things are a joke but I failed to find significant stability differences between anything over £50 so why pay £100 plus when all you get is weight saving? I haven't got a problem with lumping an extra 200g - 300g around with me to keep £50 in my pocket or better still contributed towards some good glass.

I just think the more hype the more cost, the more cost the better people percive things to be. IMO :|
 
fleaz said:
how about amateur use with professional gear?

why risk £££ worth of gear on a £ tripod?
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yes you are right:thumbs: maybe just because I don't use tripod that much and when I do use them usually I'm still holding the camera;)
 
Kev R said:
My point is that they all moved no matter how expensive, OK the really cheap things are a joke but I failed to find significant stability differences between anything over £50 so why pay £100 plus when all you get is weight saving? I haven't got a problem with lumping an extra 200g - 300g around with me to keep £50 in my pocket or better still contributed towards some good glass.

I just think the more hype the more cost, the more cost the better people percive things to be. IMO :|
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Out of interest where did you do your testing?

The key on stability is intended use. Also, the tripod hed used plays a major part in stability. You may not have been able to tell much difference but wait untill you try and do a long exposure shot in anything more than a light breeze. Or keeping a 300mm + lens steady at under 1/125th second. Or using the tripod on uneven ground to get perfect positioning for a landscape.

If you never need to push the limits of a tripod, then you will never need to understand why people fork out a lot of money. In the world of tripods, for the most part, the more the cose the better the tripod is.
 
Build quality and features. Nothing more, nothing less. I have one that cost under £15 and one that cost many times that. I don't use the cheap one (was bought when I had a G5 (for which it was fine).

If you can't tell any difference, keep the cheap one.

Graham
 
Also depends on how much your going to use one. If your going to use it once in a blue moon, you could possibly add extra weght to the centre of your current tripod to make it more stable, but if your going to use one on a regular basis, it's probably worth investing in a good quality one (as you would with a body or lens). :)
 
It's just like anything else, of course someone whose spent £500 on a Tripod is going to tell you it's better than a £200 Tripod, they just spent £500 on it! :D
 
Kev R said:
My point is that they all moved no matter how expensive, OK the really cheap things are a joke but I failed to find significant stability differences between anything over £50 so why pay £100 plus when all you get is weight saving? I haven't got a problem with lumping an extra 200g - 300g around with me to keep £50 in my pocket or better still contributed towards some good glass.

I just think the more hype the more cost, the more cost the better people percive things to be. IMO :|
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OK lets get real here, I have both a Velbon CX640 and a significantly more expensive carbon fibre jobby. The Velbon is fine for wide angle landscapes on a calm day on reasonably flat ground. The tripod itself is quite stable and gets most of its stability from inter leg/central column braces which are fine most of the time but exasperatingly limiting on uneven ground. Its weakness is the plastic head assembly which, over time, gets loose and floppy and cracks as in my case. It is not designed to support heavy lenses either. It is a great tripod to support a spotting scope for birdwatching but not much else in my experience. OK, for smaller DSLRs & kit lenses for the odd low light shot fine but if you have anything bigger/heavier it is not such a good idea.
We spend a great deal of money on our kit but the camera and glass need proper support to get the best out of them, that's why we buy "expensive" tripods, not for show but as a necessity.
 
With an expensive tripod, what you are paying for is 'features' and convenience - a light weight, versatile, secure and easily portable platform that will hold the camera in a variety of different positions. And TBH, £100 gets you a very decent tripod which will support most things effectively, and is very easy to use and to carry.

Edit: heads are a different question!
 
I've been on a journey from £40 tripod to £500 tripod and every step of the way has been an improvement. Partly weight but mainly stability. Testing them in a shop of carpet will not show how stable the expensive tripod is as it will wobble on the carpet.

What I do know is that I was on the Norfolk coast last November in a pretty strong wind shooting birds at dusk using a 500mm. Of the group of six of us, three had top end Gitzos and were able to keep shooting and the others stopped due to the wind vibrating the tripod. Not wobbling but a resonance in the wind. Since we were down at 1/15 to 1/30 sec on a 500mm lens, stability was key.

So, for me, I believe it is worth it.

As for convincing you, as your title says, I don't need to. If you don't think it is worth it to you, don't bother.
 
DonnaM said:
OK lets get real here, I have both a Velbon CX640 and a significantly more expensive carbon fibre jobby. The Velbon is fine for wide angle landscapes on a calm day on reasonably flat ground. The tripod itself is quite stable and gets most of its stability from inter leg/central column braces which are fine most of the time but exasperatingly limiting on uneven ground. Its weakness is the plastic head assembly which, over time, gets loose and floppy and cracks as in my case. It is not designed to support heavy lenses either. It is a great tripod to support a spotting scope for birdwatching but not much else in my experience. OK, for smaller DSLRs & kit lenses for the odd low light shot fine but if you have anything bigger/heavier it is not such a good idea.
We spend a great deal of money on our kit but the camera and glass need proper support to get the best out of them, that's why we buy "expensive" tripods, not for show but as a necessity.
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DonnaM

You’ve convinced me...

I wasn't for one moment suggesting people buy expensive tripods for show :nono: far from it, I looked at it from a purely simplistic point of view "Stability" yes, I may have been naive in thinking that putting your hand on a tripod costing £120 and putting your hand on a tripod costing £45 that yielded the exact same wobble was a logical test. I would love to believe a tripod knows when it has some expensive kit mounted on it and it hunkers down a bit more to increase its stability, maybe that will be the extra £50 built in to the next great thing to hit the shops :lol:

Thanks for the input all...

Anybody have a decent tripod for sale? :$
 
Kev R said:
My point is that they all moved no matter how expensive, OK the really cheap things are a joke but I failed to find significant stability differences between anything over £50 so why pay £100 plus when all you get is weight saving? I haven't got a problem with lumping an extra 200g - 300g around with me to keep £50 in my pocket or better still contributed towards some good glass.

I just think the more hype the more cost, the more cost the better people percive things to be. IMO :|
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It's not in the slightest bit hype and if you pick up a Jessops £50 tripod compared with a decent Manfrotto, Gitzo or other decent branded tripod, you'll see pretty clearly hype doesn't even come into it. If a £50 tripod was capable of keeping a heavy lens and camera stable then we'd all be using them.

Is it just hype about tripods specifically or is a Nikon D3 hyped and actually a Nikon D40 just as capable? Come on guy, seriously. Just because something is more expensive and to YOU it looks like hype doesn't make it so.

I have a Manfrotto 190XB tripod with a Benro B3 head. Total cost came to around £150 quid. In an ideal world I'd have the money to spend on better legs and a better head, which would give me weight saving however my tripod legs I KNOW are far, far, FAR more stable in any kind of condition than my old 50 quid Jessops tripod. There is absolutely no comparison. The Benro head is a ball head and lets me position the camera in exactly the position I want it to go and I know it will stay there with most lenses of any size. With my old Jessops tripod, it was generally all over the place. You just have to look at the built in heads on cheap tripods and it doesn't take a structural engineer to realise that anything above a point and click are going to be flopping all over the place.
 
I had a cheap tripod which did me great, but at Xmas I upgreaded and love the benifits.
Yes, Maybe dont need an advanced tripod as such, but I love the stability of it and also the independant legs. It can get into some tricky situations.
 
Kev R said:
I take it that would be around £150 then...:lol:
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I actually think it was something like £14.99 posted :) To be honest, I was going to try to sell it, but it's going to cost most of that to post and I wouldn't have the cheek :D

It's only when you get strong and light (think carbon fibre) that it gets a bit out of hand (although if you had to carry it any distance, you would probably pay anything!).

I soon found out that I was not going to carry a tripod and bought a geared head for use at home. So much better than a ball head because of the slower and more precise nature of the adjustments for me. If I am going to use a tripod, it's because I want to support the camera and not throw it on the floor.

Graham
 
Comparing a cheap Tripod with an expensive branded tripod will show dramatic differences BUT when you start comparing unbranded (ie Redsnapper) with the brands then it gets a bit different.

A "Name" doesn't mean you get value for money it just gives you more chance of quality
 
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