Rant # 1: about tripods and heads - PART 2

|

(continued from part 1) 

 

I first decided that I could certainly live without the A-S system, simply because I couldn't find one single shop that sold even a generic base plate in that standard. For a country, Switzerland, that gave its national adjective to the system, that seemed pretty poor, but so it is !!!

 

I thus searched shops and catalogues, online and even, in that technological age of ours, on paper. And I chose to buy an all-Manfrotto system :

    • A 055PROB tripod ;
    • a MG468RC2 hydrostatic ballhead ;
    • a « junior elbow bracket » that I couldn't find now on Manfrotto's website - a huge piece of aluminium folded 90 degrees with two RC2 plates, allowing the camera to be mounted vertically.
    • I also bought a levelling ball, useful when doing panoramic images. 

My problem started soon : the RC2 plates took a lot of space when mounted to the lenses in the bag, the one on the D200 with the grip hurt my hand, and most of all the « elbow bracket » was so big that it was simply impossible to leave it permanently on the camera. Consequently, I never used my tripod, except on rare occasion when I had to pack a separate bag for the humongously big bracket. Of course, I'm exaggerating, but not by an immense margin!

 

To sum up the problems : the legs were ok, the head worked smoothly, but the RC2 system was a PITA (and I am being quite gentle here).

 

I refuse, to this day, to count how much I had spent (plus the D200 and a very nice 80-400VR) in the tripod system, but I was back to square one, with the bonus of good legs and a good head.

 

I decided to trust my fellow Nikonians, and I did some research. And finally, I ordered a little set from Really Right Stuff:

  • a B2 Pro2 clamp;
  • a L-bracket for my D200 with grip, notwithstanding the caveats about the flexibility of that combo;
  • lens plates for my 80-200/2.8 and 80-400VR.

The package arrived quickly, and I found myself with a very nice little set. And there is no miracle: since I have had it, I have been using my tripod a lot more than I did before...

 

 

Here  is a link to a Nikonians forum thread where I demonstrated the look of the beast once assembled:

 

I then assembled another smaller combination, with Gitzo GT1540T traveller legs, and a Foba MiniSuperBall head, for those moments when it is better/easier to carry a smaller tripod - and when I don't have my usual big array of lenses, but a "do-it-all" like the 18-200. On this, I did not err, and I made sure the Foba had an A-S compatible clamp, which it does. Normal for a Swiss brand, I guess! I also bought a generic camera plate from them, which I used on the D200 when I didn't want to have the vertical grip, and which now sits under my F100. But I had to almost litterally twist arms in my local shops before they found a way to order from Foba for me.

 

Here is another post at Nikonians with images and commentaries about the smaller combo.

 

The morality, as many a Nikonian must have found out, is that there is a reason why the A-S system is praised: it works. It may be a bit elitist or snobbish to say so, but it simply really does, and I should have listened. But I am still wondering why it is so hard to find equipment that good in shops in this country!

 

Have a great time!

 

Rant # 1: about tripods and heads - PART 1

|

Hi again!

As promised in the title, this is a piece of ranting, the first one here and probably not the last at all! And this will be about tripods, or about an aspect of them.

When I joined Nikonians, I was by heritage the proud owner of an aluminium Manfrotto 190 with a Manfrotto ballhead using the big hexagonal RC0 plates. It was cumbersome, but it looked darned good to me. Until the day I found myself at the right place and the right light for a photo of a castle nearby: I opened the tripod bag, got the legs out of it, placed them right, and didn't find a single plate in the same bag or in the one for the camera and lenses. I ended up taking handheld photos that all had that Hamiltonian softness - except it was motion blur, my motion! Sorry, can't find one example, I have trashed them all since then!

Being at the time a "young Nikonian" full of enthusiasm, I also began to be interested in panoramic photography. Visiting my local shop, I fell in love with a much newer-looking Manfrotto 190DB on top of which was a very technical-looking three-way head using the much smaller and hand-friendly RC2 plates. I sold the old gear and bought this new one, only to notice how impossible it was to adjust the head to horizontal. When I made a row of photos for a pano, all the images were horizontal all right, but they never coincided since the head was not level... I got frustrated. A lot.

At about the same time, I started browsing the forum tripod at Nikonians...

Three things appeared important:

  1. I started to understand that for general photography and even panos, the best starting point would be a ball head. Preferably a Markins, judging by the contents of the forum.
  2. For pano work, the ability to use the camera in portrait orientation gave a wider image, making a L-bracket important.
  3. Finally, the graal seemed to be the Arca-Swiss compatible system of camera plates and quick-release mounts.

I started thinking of a serious upgrade. This will be the object of the rest of this post, at a later moment today!

A warm welcome to myself in the blogosphere!

|

Well, now, here I am!

Thanks to the staff at Nikonians, and to my highly reknown capability to use things that I am never too sure I really need, I am now the owner of a blog. Of course, some questions will surely spring to mind, the foremost being "what the heck am I going to write about?"

The answer, surely, given that this is a Nikonians blog, will be photography in general. Expect praise for others (and maybe sometimes for myself, let's be honest!), rants about miscellana in the photo or cyber-worlds, in other words everything you will find on usual blogs with a little bias towards photography in general and the Nikon system in particular.

Well, that is the end of my first entry... happy everything to you, rare reader!

Olivier