For many new photographers, the first new purchase after buying a DSLR is usually another lens or perhaps a flashgun. Ironically of all the things that can be bought, perhaps the one that is most overlooked and yet can provide the biggest improvement to the technical quality of your images is a tripod.
Sadly when newcomers to photography do get round to purchasing a tripod, they tend to go for the cheaper option, believing that there is little or no difference buying a cheap tripod than a more expensive one.
This unfortunately is not the case and many a photographer has abandoned the idea of using tripods due to poor experiences when they started out. In this article we are going to look at why you need one and what to buy.
A cheap tripod will ultimately disappoint.
The primary purpose of a tripod is to stabilize your camera before shooting. In good light, with a high enough shutter speed, our own bodies make a perfectly good stabilizing platform. However, when the light is less than ideal or we are using a telephoto lens, then we may start to see an inherent lack of sharpness to our shots. This is known as camera shake.
You may not even notice it in your images, assuming that you are not printing large format or looking on a high resolution screen. Take the same shot with the camera locked off on a tripod and you might be astounded by the improvement in quality, especially when zoomed in on screen.
Beyond camera shake, some other reasons for using a tripod include, being able to lock the camera in an awkward position, getting matching exposures for the best quality in HDR images, shooting macro subjects and capturing video footage.
A Good Tripod Will Improve Your Photography
So let's look at what to consider when buying a tripod. As we said earlier, buying a cheap tripod is, in the long run, going to be a frustrating experience. Most cheap tripods are made of plastic or very cheap quality aluminum, this means that they bend and buckle very easily under the strain of even a relatively lightweight camera.
As well as this, they are often so light that even a moderate breeze can add significant instability to the camera. Lastly, they are more often than not, sold with integrated heads, this is the platform upon which you place your camera. These heads are usually plastic and do not move freely when panning or tilting the camera. That can make fine tuning your composition an extremely frustrating exercise.
A good quality tripod will generally consist of two parts that need to be purchased separately. The bottom section will consist of the legs and the center column, whilst the upper section will be the head. What you are looking for is to find a combination of legs and head that suit your style of photography.
The main considerations when choosing the legs for a tripod are:
How many sections do the legs have? This is generally three or four, three would be better as the more sections the more likelihood there is for increased instability. However, you also have to consider the maximum height that you wish to obtain with your tripod, so you may need to have four sections.
Section Locks, these are the mechanisms that lock the leg sections when extended. The main choices are lever or twist locks. Lever locks can get stiff,especially if the tripod is used in extreme conditions and not cleaned thoroughly, whilst with twist locks you need to make sure you have fully tightened the lock before use.
Weight, carrying a tripod all day will add a significant load to your equipment. Low end quality tripods are generally made from aluminum or steel, which whilst sturdy, can be quite heavy. There is now a significant number of tripod legs on the market made from carbon-fiber, these are significantly lighter whilst maintaining excellent rigidity but come at a premium price.
Load weight, a DSLR with a telephoto lens can be quite heavy. All good quality tripods will include in their specifications, a load weight. This is the maximum weight that can safely be used. When considering the load weight, think ahead, if you plan to buy heavier lenses or DSLR in the future, figure this into your calculation.
A Good Head Is Equally Important
The other main component of the tripod is the head. In many cases this can be as expensive as the legs section but as always you pay for what you get. The most basic type of head is a ball socket. This, as the name suggests, is a ball that rotates and allows for a wide range of movement.
The advantages are that they tend to be the smallest and lightest heads available but disadvantages include lower load weights and less accuracy when locking off. The other main type of head is the pan and tilt. These are the dual handle heads that allow you to lock the camera in either of two planes. These tend to be somewhat heavier but add more flexibility and accuracy.
Most heads will also include a quick release mechanism, this is a small plate that slides off the head whilst attached to the base plate of the camera. This allows you to quickly remove the camera and move the tripod.
Other features that you can look for, include reversible center columns, these allow you to swing the column and head underneath the legs, allowing for low level shooting such as macro work, built in spirit levels and spiked feet for landscape photographers.
There are also dedicated pan and tilt video heads designed for shooting video from your stills camera. Again a cheap one of these will definitely disappoint you. The better ones have fluid plates that allow you to smoothly pan and tilt the camera, a very important consideration when capturing video.
What You Can Achieve With A Good Tripod
So you need a good tripod, but why? Not everyone is going to need a tripod but there will be times when the light is low and the view in front of you, stunning. What do you do, bump the ISO and risk the noise or put the camera on a tripod and get a beautiful, low noise, sharp photo?
Personally I would go for sharp and low noise every time. But that’s not the full story. A tripod opens up all sorts of creative possibilities when it comes to motion. Love those ethereal seascape shots? You are going to need a tripod. Want clouds streaking across your architectural shots? Again tripod required. Anything in the blue hour is going to need a tripod.
Whilst tripods get us out of a hole when the light is low, they can also be put to use in good light. Add on a 10 stop ND filter and drop the shutter speed down to ultra low speeds and you will get those shots we just mentioned.
But there’s more. Using a tripod will slow you down. It will make you think more about your composition and positioning. It will reduce the number of shots you take but increase the quality of those shots. But only if you buy a good tripod.
Summary
A cheap tripod is one of the most common and worst investments you can make in your photographic journey. The initial “fun” of shooting from that tripod will soon wear off once you see the poor results you are getting from it. And that can be fatal to your creativity.
Invest in a good tripod, plan your shoots with care and consideration and you will soon find the creative possibilities of tripods far outweigh the inconvenience of carrying them.