Tripods

[Burgerman]

As a disabled amateur photographer I need tripods! Why? Lon exposures, focus stacking, movies that do not shake or wobble with long lenses, time lapse movies, etc.

The problem is that in a wheelchair its very hard to reach to one side in order to hold a caera in one (correct) position while tightening a clamp on the ypical ball head. Since I can only get one hand to it and need three! The camera and lens combination can be 2 or 3kg. So enter the GEAR HEAD tripod. Its low geared and uses a heavy damping grease. So super controlled. And easy to adjust.

This is a damped super smooth tripod head on a carbon fibre base that is adjustable in 3 independent 3 D directions. No wobble no freeplay, and all done via three large screw handles. Not cheap but being disabled never is.

It allows me to move the camera in exact positions with one hand and 2 fingers. And the camera clamp is just as easy, with an arca swiss type connection. Works great for wheelchair photography. Should anyone else be interested.

Lowest height about 2 feet. Highest height around 5' feet 6 inches. So perfect for a seated wheelchair user. Or with seat elevated. I also have a bar that sits on top and moves the camera to one side or the other by around 300mm Not shown here. So the camera can sit over my lap at eye height or a little lower/higher as required.

[Burgerman]

Cheap chinesium obviously. But great quality! And not that cheap!

Considering its all CNC machined, alloy, carbon fibre, and very stiff and free of flexibility. Even if windy its rock solid. Pixel perfect long exposures or multiple exposures even at a frankly rediculous pixel shifted 180 MegaPixels. Its small when folded up and its bag is easy to carry as its strap hooks over the rear of my chair. And great on 8.3K 60p movies. (which in raw send data to the memory card at a crazy 780MB per second continuously.) Thats way faster than most hard disks or normal SSDs can take it. So the memory card has to be pretty capable! And it gets too hot to hold. It fills a 1TB card in 21 minutes.

Perfect tripod for my Nikon Z8 which is quite heavy. Feels like its carved from a block of metal... Makes for easy handling. Will post pics of the horizontal beam part tomorrow hopefully.

[HiltonP]

That sounds really interesting John.
Care to share the brand name, retailer?

[Burgerman]

The gear head?
Yes. theres a few different ones. I looked at several. This one is the best made of the three I looked at.

https://www.kentfaith.com/KF31.047_3-wa ... pod%20head
Theres a UK site too.
https://www.kentfaith.co.uk/KF31.047_3- ... pod%20head

I also bough one of the K&F carbon fibre tripods. But the alloy ones are fine/cheaper too.
And the horizontal arm is a part of one or two of them...
Same site.

I looked at one of these and it had a lot of "play" on the gears and less accurate. So I bought the K&F one. Theres aso a cheaper one on amazon, and its junk...
So of the 3 that K&F the one to get!