Baby tripods

Hi,

How many of you would trust hundreds of pounds worth of camera gear to one of these..?




Nor me either. But I guess most of you have one lying around to use with the point and shoot. They cost about a quid on ebay.

Problem:

Knowing you need a tripod for the day, and would prefer to use one over a beanbag, you have to lug the manfrotto/vanguard etc, with you because there's no alternative right? Wrong. You can follow Liam's handy hint here instead.

It started sounding like a JML advert so I went with it..

The reason that these are inherently unsteady is because the head of the tripod stops the legs from angling out far enough to give the required size of base area to support the camera steadily. As you can see in the above photo, the legs only come out a couple of inches from vertical.

Solution:

Have a look underneath the head, between the legs of the tripod and you'll see a phillips screw (at least on both the ones I have there is).

Undo it so the legs are detached from the head, and just insert a couple of washers between the leg cradle and the head, like so..




You won't see them so it doesn't matter what they look like. Play with different thicknesses/numbers of washers until you have the right clearance between legs and body for the legs to open sufficiently, while still having enough thread to screw the lot back together again. If not, get a longer screw. It'll be metric so dig around in the garage or pop into your local iron mongers and spend about 5p on one.

While you have it apart, just check the screws that hold the legs to the cradle and tighten them if needed. Put it all back together again and you have a tripod easily capable of supporting your camera safely..




..even when using a lens mounted tripod fixing.




It also enables you to shoot from only a couple of inches off the ground. They all come with ball joint adjustment, so you can leave the legs where they fall and adjust as necessary with that.

Total cost, even if you have to buy the tripod specially from ebay, is change out of a couple of quid, and you get to use an otherwise redundant bit of kit.

Hope that helps,

Cheers

Liam

There's a certain ironic element to this, which is nothing to do with your idea, which is excellent.

I was doing my talk "The Way We Were" which is a light hearted and affectionate look at the way photographer's behaved in the first half of the 20th Century; and indeed a more serious look at some of the very fine work they produced.

One quirky aspect of photography way back then was the way people found such ingenious DIY things to do. Such as "Things You Can Do With Cigar Boxes" (lovely little article from AP) or "How to Build an Acetylene Generator" and "Adventures with Magnesium Ribbon"........

So it's great that the tradition is resurrected, albeit it a relatively harmless way!

So what on earth would we do with an Acetylene Generator?

I don't know about an acetelyne generator, but I rember a trick involving a tomato juice can, some caulking, a spark plug and some aceteline, that landed a carhood on a garage roof, one time....What is the statute of limmitations in Canada for mischief anyways?

I've always used mine for generating acetylene. Useful for when the batteries in the flashgun go dead.

But seriously, great idea, Liam. I've already modified one of mine.

G

By the way-in case my previous post freaked anybody out, I said "mischief" please think more along the lines of a bunch of highschool students cutting shop class to wreck a derilect in my friends backyard- do not think along the lines of "Osama Bin-Hidin' ".

Hi,

glad you like it..

John,

I do it with everything. If I can make it, I'd rather do that than buy something.. or at least buy something cheap and modify it anyway. The stands for remote flashes for instance; I picked up a high-hat stand (the one that a drummer fixes his high hat cymbal to) from a boot sale, added a 1/4" bolt to fix the flash to it, and can now position a flash anywhere from ground level to about 7-8 feet high and in a radius of around 4 feet in any direction. The main stand is 4' high, with a swivel joint holding a counterbalanced arm of another 4' or so. Handy if you have lots of junk around the place but need correct positioning of the flash. I have another baby tripod, so I may change the bolt for the ball joint now.

Cheers

Liam

An excellent fix and so simple.

I did something in the opposite direction, modified a tripod to accept a sky dish whilst camping, but guess who managed to lose the body screw?Later after getting back to real size cameras it was well gone.

As for mischief it's all about learning and saying sorry , vandalism however has neither qualities.

Regards
Alan