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The Fountain of Youth A Review of Lightweight Tripods and HeadsPosted on Sunday, July 1, 2007 at 10:52 AMTHE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH A REVIEW OF LIGHT WEIGHT TRIPODS AND HEADS Birding can be a lot of work. And I don’t know about you, but I find myself aging rapidly as the hill gets steeper, the day gets hotter, and the gear I’m carrying seems to get heavier and heavier. I could carry less, but I never want to leave my scope behind. Any bird I can see in binocs is always better through a scope and much easier to show others. And of course there’s the issue of taking as many digiscoped pictures as possible… In the “old days” of even a few years ago, there didn’t seem to be a lot of choices for tripods and heads. Just about everyone I knew was using a Bogen 3011 tripod along with their very smooth 3130 head. But talk about weight….Without the scope this combination weighed over 7 lbs. And even covering the legs with foam pipe insulators didn’t help much. By the end of the day, only the most phenomenal life bird could put a dent in the pain…. But technology has made some leaps forward. And although they may not be exactly what Ponce de Leon was looking for, the latest breed of light weight tripods and heads go a long way towards staving off the aging process as the day wears on and the hills get steeper. In this column I’m going to take a close look at some of the lightweight options for tripods and heads; products that can significantly lighten your load, and help you maintain that youthful spring in your step.
.LIGHTWEIGHT TRIPODSThe key technology that has made a new generation of light weight tripods possible is carbon fiber. From sailing boats to airplanes to golf clubs, carbon fiber’s properties of great strength and very light weight have transformed many product categories. DAMPINGIn addition to being light weight, carbon fiber also has incredible damping properties. Damping is very important for tripods, especially when you are taking pictures. In a (heavily damped) nutshell, damping is the propensity of an object to return to its quiescent state when set in motion. It basically measures how fast an object stops its “internal” movement after being put in motion by some outside force. A carbon fiber tripod is made from layers of strands or fibers. I’m assuming that the tripods strong tendency to return to a quiescent state has to do with this fibrous nature. Wood, also fibrous, also has very good damping qualities. However, for use as a tripod, it suffers from being relatively very heavy. You may be very surprised to see the results of the damping tests I performed and summarize below. Heavy metal tripods seem very stable. But in reality, once they start moving, whether from you bumping or moving your scope to a gust of wind, they keep on moving for a long time. That means that you must wait a long time to take a picture or even see a clear image of a highly magnified seabird. This damping characteristic of carbon fiber really is the key to why they can be so light and also work so well for bird watching. DAMPING CHARACTERISTICS TESTIf you would like to test the damping characteristics of your tripod, tape a laser pointer to the top of your scope and point it at a wall 15 or so feet away. Get a stop watch. Tap your scope or, for more precision, arrange a weight on a string that you can swing to contact the handle for the head from a repeatable height. Measure the time it takes for the laser to stop moving. DON’T USE THE CENTER POLEYou will also see from the test results below that all tripods perform much more poorly when you use their center pole. The three point design of a tripod really helps control the movement of your scope or camera rig. Once you use the center pole, the damping time greatly increases. Of course if you are just watching birds in a quiet environment and not taking pictures, this may not matter. But otherwise it’s very important to NOT use the center pole. And that means you need a tripod that is high enough without the center pole to see birds in trees and in the sky. Of course an angled scope also helps a lot. WATCH THE WINDAs I mention above, carbon fiber is actually better than aluminum in a strong wind. It suffers from movement in a similar fashion, but, due to its strong damping, returns to a quiet state very rapidly. In fact it really is amazing to look thru a scope, see the movement from wind and watch the image snap into place quite quickly with carbon fiber. Recently I was birding with some biologists from Point Reyes Bird Observatory on a very windy promontory, looking for Horned Puffins (we found 2…part of an unusual influx south of their normal range). I was using the Gitzo GT1530 and the other tripod was a standard Bogen metal tripod. The gusts of wind were easily over 40 mph, and the Gitzo definitely offered the clearest views of the sea birds we were scanning. However, since the tripod is very light, it can easily be blown over more readily than a heavy metal tripod. This is one very dangerous side effect of being light weight. All of the carbon fiber tripods I tested have weight clips at the bottom of their center post. You can hang your camera bag or some other weighted object from the clip to help eliminate this danger. But the bottom line is that in strong winds you must watch your light-weight rig much more closely than heavier setups. TRIPOD TESTING CRITERIAHere are the criteria I considered when testing and rating the tripods below. Weight Damping Height without the center pole Some very light weight tripods don’t get high enough without the use of the pole to be practical in the field. See above about why you don’t want to use the center pole Speed of setup Some carbon fiber tripod models use circular “nuts” to tighten and hold the legs in place. To set up and take down your scope you have to loosen or tighten these nuts. I find this method actually very fast and prefer it over lever-style adjusters. They never catch on your clothes and the tripod can be in any orientation and you can still start your setup, unlike levers which often have to be oriented properly so that you can grab the levers to unlatch the clamps. But there is one very important feature for these nut-style fasteners. You must be able to turn either one or both at the same time, no matter what state they are in. On less expensive models I tested, once the upper nut was loose, the lower one would spin freely. So you are forced to loosen and tighten the sections in order, and it’s not easy to do both at once. This can make the process very slow and takes too much thinking ahead in the heat of a great bird. Price Price wasn’t a consideration for these tests. Unfortunately, carbon fiber is expensive! You have to pay for the fountain of youth…. Basalt is less expensive, but it also is about 20% heavier and has 20-30% less damping ability. I did test a very light weight basalt leg set similar to the GT2931 by Gitzo, but it’s heavier than the higher GT1530 and the damping was about 30% slower.. And they aren’t that much less expensive.
LIGHT WEIGHT HEADSThere are a number of heads on the market today that are much lighter than the tried and true Bogen 3130. But are they as smooth and versatile? Here are the test criteria I used. Weight Smoothness of motion I really hate it when you want to move to another bird and the scope seems to stick and then all of a sudden jumps as you apply more force. This can be very disorienting when you are tracking a bird and there’s nothing worse than losing that Spoon-billed Sandpiper as it moves around because your scope jumps. Hate it! Stay-puttedness….. When you put your camera on the scope does it change positions? As you tighten or lock down the scope’s position, does the head move slightly or stay right in place? Ease of making slight adjustments Once you have your scope, or the camera attached to your scope, on the bird, can you easily move the position slightly to center the bird without any sticking or jumping or drooping of the rig? Consistency of action Does the head work the same way each time you use it? Is it easy to get to your “default” settings quickly when you go from a carrying position to looking at birds? Ease of putting scope in and out of the carrying position When moving from place to place you need a head that will keep the scope from flopping around. Do you have to tighten a lot of knobs to get a good carrying status? And is it a hassle to “undo” these settings once you’re back to scanning for birds? TRY USING A SHOULDER STRAPBy the way, I carry my scope on a strap. I think this is a much better way to move around than putting the legs on your shoulder, as I see most birders doing. It doesn’t hurt as much, you have both hands free at all times, and it is very fast to get the tripod down and scanning.
..Carrying your scope on a strap leaves your hands free to do important birding activities... SUMMARY AND A FEW NOTESLEG SUMMARY
GITZO 1530 I love the Gitzo GT1530 leg set. It is very well made, easy and fast to set up and take down, and has the lightest weight and fastest damping of all of the leg sets I tested.
The Swarovski CT 101 legs are also very good, but a bit bulkier and use a lever rather than a nut-style leg adjuster, which I found a bit more fiddly to set up quickly. It also comes with leg pads, in case you carry your scope over your shoulder. And as you can see from the data, these legs also have very good damping characteristics. They also have set screws to keep the head from spinning free from the legs, which I also really like. I definitely did not like any leg sets using locking nuts if the legs turned freely once one set of nuts was loose. And this was just about all of the offerings I tested except the Gitzos including
. HEAD SUMMARY
G2180 GITZO G2180 I really wanted to like this Gitzo head. It is well made and feels like a fine piece of machinery. It is very light weight and compact. And if you have the settings exactly right, it is very smooth to use. But getting the settings right is a very, very difficult and at times tedious process. The vertical tension adjusters are very coarsely threaded, so any movement of the adjusting dial can make dramatic differences in the tightness of the head. I found that I was constantly fiddling with this side dial to try and get to the smooth setting I needed. And if I added a camera to take a shot, I had to change it again. And if I wanted to move the scope, I had to tighten the head hard, which made getting it back to the viewing settings really tough. In fact, the adjusters never really tighten completely, so the scope always did a bit of flopping around. Finally, the design of this head uses a spring to help balance the weight of the scope or scope and camera. You tighten the spring in one direction to compensate for any tendency the rig would have to droop. I found it impossible to find a spring setting that worked for the whole range of movements I might need. If it was set for looking straight at the horizon, then it would droop considerably when I tried to view a raptor or something in a tree. And so then again I’d have to try and fiddle with the side tensioning controls. And it often took a long time to get a smooth setting.
SWAROVSKI FH 101 In contrast, I loved the Swarovski FH 101. It was very easy to “dial it in” to a smooth and versatile setting. I found that one setting worked for just about any position of the scope and also didn’t require any additional changes if I added my camera. And this one setting was good for scanning and also smooth fine adjustments of the scope or camera’s position. For vertical control, this head has two dials. One sets the tension and is very finely threaded, so you can make many turns to subtly change the tension on the head. The other dial locks the movement completely, so that you can put the scope in a carrying position and lock it tight. You can also use this if you are showing a group a distant perched bird to keep someone from accidentally moving the scope.
To carry the scope, I lowered its position and then used the locking dial to completely lock down any vertical movement. This worked very well and allowed for a very fast transition from carrying to scanning, as you unlock the position and you’re ready to go, with your scanning tension already set.
T he horizontal adjuster is a bit odd. You can adjust the tension of the movement using a side screw. Once that is the way you want it, you normally would never change it. There is a locking tab that can then lock down the horizontal movement if need be. Sometimes I found that this locking tab, which according to Swarovski works with a set of internal teeth, moved the position of the scope a bit. I tested two different FH 101s and one seemed to move the position a bit more often than the other. But in the field, I found I never really needed to lock down the horizontal movement. It is very stable, the movement is smooth, and when carrying the scope I prefer to have the rig free to move in the horizontal direction so that the scope will quickly and automatically orient to the best carrying position without putting any stress on the scope’s mount. As does the Gitzo, the Swarovski has a locking mechanism for the quick release plate so that you can’t accidentally bump the release lever and drop your scope. This release bar feels a bit flimsy to me, but according to the factory, they hold up fine. If you have a Swarovski scope, this head makes even more sense as the base of the scope fits right onto the FH 101 head, with no plate required. The bottom line is that I found the Swarovski FH 101 to be a very easy to use and light weight head that worked very well with my 85mm scope and also with my camera rig. BOGEN/MANFROTTO 700 RC2 AND 701 RC2 HEADS These light weight offerings distributed by Bogen Imaging in the
The lighter weight 700 I found to be a bit flimsy feeling, and I could never get an adjustment that I felt was completely smooth. This can be very frustrating, especially if you are trying to make fine adjustments when centering a bird for a photo.
The 701 is a more viable candidate. I tried two different 701s. One felt a little sticky, but the other seemed to be smooth and worked fine for a whole day of birding. I don’t know if there are QC differences between individuals or if there are wear issues. However since this model is less expensive than the Swarovski, it would be worth considering if you want to save some money on the head.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONSThere is a review in Ball heads are also light weight contenders. Designed for cameras, they don’t have arms, so if you used one with a scope you would need to move your rig using the scope itself. An example is the Gitzo G1278 that weighs 20.8 ozs. I may test some of these in a later article, but the little bit I’ve used them they seem to be very smooth actions. Wooden tripods and also twin-legged tripods offer good stability and the twin leg design resists twisting motions. They are used primarily for surveying as they are quite heavy, but I have seen some birders using them. Dutch Hill makes popular Surveyors’ tripods including some now in carbon fiber. Their wooden GT2000 weighs 12 lbs. Their carbon fiber CH900CF weighs 6.25 lbs Compare this to the 2.6 lbs of the Gitzo GT1530 and feel the pain…. But of course if you have porters, you could consider these.
WINNING COMBINATIONMy favorite combination was the Gitzo GT1530 and the Swarovski FH 101. This was the lightest combination and also combined the most stable and well-damped base with the smoothest and easiest to adjust head. This is a great light-weight setup and I highly recommend it. Other candidates that would work well would be the Swarovski CT 101 legs, also very good, and possibly the Bogen 701 RC2 head. THE RAW DATAHEADS
For reference, the old standard Bogen 3130 34.7 oz Smooth and reliable Heavy and bulky LEGS
For reference, the old standard (similar to 3021 or 055V) Bogen 3011 80 oz 53.25 4.85 sec Smaller diameter aluminum. Bogen 3001 72 oz 46.8 4.2 sec (I did the damping test for the 3001 in the field rather than the more controlled environment where I performed the other damping tests. So this is a bit less accurate, probably)
MORE LEG DATA
MORE GENERAL DATA
COMING SOON:
If something that I covered needs further explanation, I’ll try and provide that in a future column.
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