Tripod recommendation

GodAtum

GodAtum

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Small tripod recommendation

I'm looking for a small and light tripod for city trips that will fit in/on my backpack and not get in the way of people on the pavement. I'll be taking night shots so will be using long exposure. Will need to hold a Sony a77 with 70-400 lens and flash.

A gorillapod looks good but a bit short. The velbon cx mini looks perfect but I cant find any reviews.
 
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Forget about anything too small, and light for a night photo longs exposure. 400mm is a lot of lens which does a lot of magnification of any vibration, especially on crop.

With a lens that long it is recommended to get something very beefy. Gitzo 3531 would be my recommendation from my experience and professional photography resources would support this. Weighs only about 1.9kg, so quite light for the strength. A rule of thumb is that a very good tripod (e.g carbon fibre, top manufacture, premium series) can only properly support the same weight of camera and lens as the weight of the tripod plus head. 3.5kgs of camera and lens will end up needing about 3-4kg of tripod and head to offer suitable support.

Tripod sizing and strength is decided upon in relation to focal length and subject magnification (macro is very demanding even with small lenses) , physical length of the lens is very important because that is what will amplify any vibrations. So although your 70-400 may not be that heavy on a crop sensor you have massive magnification of vibrations and mirror slap, far more than. A giant 600mm lens used on a full frame camera.


Whatever you buy you should be to set your 70-400 to 400mm and tap the end of the glass with zero vibration. You can test this by doing a long exposure against a dark wall with a laser pointer attached.
 
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have you look at using a bean bag, as they are good to use. they take far bit of weight depending on the size and will cause next to nothing in vibrations. the only other thing is a Joby Gorilla Pod and attach it to the len and not the camera body so that you maintain the center of gravity.
 
What's the budget? No doubt the Gitzo 3531 is nice but at around £570, that's quite a considered purchase... Even more so given the OP asked about a Velbon Mini CX which is about £35.
 
Either buy a tripod that is usable for the task at hand and is a quality product that will last a long time or don't both. 40 tripods will not cut it, the OP should have budgeted for a good tripod when considering the lens purchase.

Tripods and heads are sadly expensive, much like most things in photography. Cheap tripods are simply not functional.I know, i've been through several and tried many more moderate priced ones.


The OP wantsa to put a 70-400mm lens on a crop camera for long exposure, that is about the most demanding scenario that exist in photography. As I said, a 600mm lens on a FF body has fr less demands in stability (but other demands in ease of use).


Ultimately, buying cheap tripods simply wastes money. Don't take my word for, read what professionals have to say http://bythom.com/support.htm



If one cannot budget for a suitable tripod then bean bags or a decent monopod (take care of exposure times) are much better options than flimsy pieces of alu.
 
Yeah, that would be fine if we are talking £100 vs £40. But we aren't.

£40 Vivitar 72" tripod from Argos. Folds away to about 20". Bang on. Even has a free shoulder bag.
 
Dj_Jestar said:
Yeah, that would be fine if we are talking £100 vs £40. But we aren't.

£40 Vivitar 72" tripod from Argos. Folds away to about 20". Bang on. Even has a free shoulder bag.
Click to expand...

Makes a great support for a flash or umbrella I am sure, not a camera with a 400mm lens!


I have several old tripod I was given ranging from £25-75, Op is welcome to any of them is he picks them up. They are pretty much paper weights, although i was tempted to use one of them as a support for my tomato plants, the £40 is perhaps a little stronger than my thin bamboo stick I currently use.
 
Given an A77 body is around £900, I'd guess the OP would have loved to budget £500+ for a tripod...

A Manfrotto 055CX3 is half the price of the Gitzo.
 
My tripod and head are often much more valuable than my camera and lens attached to it. In fact the OP's combo is more valuable than anything I have, unless I add my TC and stack on as many B&W filters as I can....

Anyway, So what? the tripod combo will last 15-20 years, in that time I will go through 4-8 cameras and most of my lenses will have been replaced.

That is at least a 900gbp camera with at least a 1300gbp lens and I assume the op has other lenses, filters, batteries, back pack has paid hundred for light room or photoshop etc.
Why is it surprising that after spending 2.5k or more on camera gear that 500 quid needs to be spent on a tripod that can support all of that?
 
I would get two tripods, one expensive, and another like a red snapper.

The reason is the expensive one would probably hold you back at times. No way would I take a £900 tripod in the sea.
 
Good luck getting a stable set-up on anything other than a medium to heavy duty tripod with the kit you have.

You're looking at a ton-plus to have any hope of stability. I have an extremely well made Giottos that does the job quite nicely. You can pick up a decent set of legs for about £100.
 
if you want good quality and robust tripod but are not willing to spend over £100 then i suggest you get the re snapper one as it is the best brand you can get for the £50-£80 mark the cheaper one's for under £40 don't last long or limited in what it can do.
 
The issue is not that the cheap tripods don't last long or have limited functionality (that is expected), they simply do not work full stop. Frame your scene and tighten the head with any lens like the 70-400 and the head will collapse under the weight and point downwards several degrees from your framed position, ruining your composition. With skill you can try to compensate by framing above your intended final composition and let the slack in the head slide the frame back into the correct view. I found with these cheap nasty tripods that leaving the head locked as tightly as you can and simply using the legs to change the framing is the easiest method, you have to do it by trial and error because you can't look through the viewfinder while you are doing this.

Then when you take the photo you find soft blurred images because at 400mm on a crop body the finest vibrations become highly visible. Exposure delay and a remote become critical rather than just a good idea, god help you if there is so much as a breeze or pigeon farts 2 miles away. You can try to improve things by using your 4 piece legs as 3 piece legs so your 3kg of camera gear is not supported by the tiniest pieces of thin aluminum. A heavy bag hung underneath at least stops a sneezing Japanese tourist knocking over the setup from 50ft but there is still a load of vibration. A heavy bean bag resting on top of the lens can only absorb so much vibration.


It really doesn't take long before such tripods are relegated to holding a flash or supporting your home grown garden tomatoes.

The more expensive 100-200 tripods are immensely better, but suffer most of the same problems to less extents. The difference is you paid 200 quid instead of 30. If you go for the very heavy steel tripods in the 200 range you can find some very stable setups that are not very practical outside a studio. Cheap Alu and carbon fiber tripods act as resonant frequency magnifiers for the inherent vibrations and are to be avoided like the plague.


You can choose 2 of cheap, lightweight, stable. Tripods that are not stable are useless so you really have a choice of cheaper (but not very cheap) and heavy, or expensive and lighter (but not too light as there is a minimum of strength and weight needed to be effective).
 
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Oh, one more thing. With such a lens you will not be attaching the camera to a head, you will be attaching the lens to the tripod head, better hope the lens collar is suitable.... ( some of.Nikon's lenses are a little disappointing here).
 
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Its a hired lens so only paid £100 for a week. The scenario in my original post was an extreme one. I will mostly use the kit lens for night photography so can get away with a cheaper tripod. The Manfrotto Carbon Fibre Tripod + 3-way QR Head is only £89, fits up to 3.5kg and only weights 950g. Not sure if the head is removable or if it can pan decently for video.
 
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well i use my re snapper and ,ount my telescope on to it plus have my 550d connected to the telescope so that about 3-4kg.
 
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