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What's the best tripod to get for a $100-$200 USD/AUD range?

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thedantay:
Thanks so much for the quick reply guys! Great suggestions! Will be shopping for it in a week.

ronderick:
You might want to rank your priorities before purchasing a tripod. What do you consider to be more important? Stability or Portability?

Having a heavy tripod is great for taking photos, but not the best choice if you move around a lot or need to climb a mountain or two.

Just my 2 cents.

CR Backup Admin:

--- Quote from: thedantay on April 17, 2011, 10:32:41 PM ---I've been looking for tripods for the past few months. But I don't know which one would be best for my price range. My current one is really cheap and blew over in the wind causing me to split my Tamron 17-50 2.8 lens up the side. Sad but need to move on.
Any suggestions?

--- End quote ---


Edcutate yourself more before jumping in, so you know the pros and cons of tripods.  It will be difficult to find any pro quality tripods with a decent head in that price range.  They are probably OK for light cameras and smaller lenses, but not for telephoto.  You may be able to find one you think you like, but you will sooner or later want something better when you find out that you can't match those sharp telephoto images you see posted.  A tripod needs to be very stable in order to eliminate vibration blur, and the head needs to hold your camera / lens locked tightly.  There are some tricks to helping  reducing vibration, like putting your over the top of the lens directly over the tripod foot to help damp out vibrations.  Even with my expensive Wimberly Head and heavy duty tripod, it made a huge difference with a 600mm L (non-IS) to do this.

I started with what I thought was a pretty good Manfroto tripod and ball head that I picked up used for about $100.  However, with lenses like my Canon 400mm f/5.6 L or Tamron 200-500, I had to keep the shutter speed to 1/1000 to avoid motion blur.  So, eventually, I bit the bullet and upgraded to a higher end setup.  Along the way, I probably spent $500 on equipment that could not do the job.  I was able to resell most of it, but lost a lot of $$.

Be sure to get a Tripod with a underhook or other way of hanging weight underneath it.  Ten pounds can do wonders to stabilize a tripod as long as it can handle the weight.  However, even with a relatively modest lens like the 400mm f/5.6, will have too much movement to handle slow shutter speeds with a low cost tripod / head.  Never extend the center column, get a tripod tall enough to use without extending the center column.   A good set of tripod legs can easily run $500 - 700 and lots more, and the head another $500.  If you want to support a big super telephoto properly, the price goes way up.

 I'd look at used tripods with good heads on ebay or somewhere like that.  You can get a lot more for your $200 on the used market, and if you decide to upgrade later, you won't lose a ton of money.  There are also some Chinese models that are heavy and stable for a lot less money. 


Stability testing:

http://regex.info/blog/2007-09-20/578

http://regex.info/blog/2007-09-18/576

http://regex.info/blog/2007-09-21/579

For those seriously wanting the best quality with their expensive rigs:

http://www.bythom.com/support.htm

Flake:
Be very careful before buying a Bogen / Manfrotto, since being taken over they have cheapened their product, and it is not what it once was.  In addition items which are standard on other tripods are now extras on the Manfrotto (such as spiked feet) and if you being it up to the level of the competitors you might have well bought a Gitzo.

In addtion if you want a centre pole which you can angle the Manfrotto only allows vertical or horizontal, and if you want it horizontal there's another costly optional extra to allow you to mount the head upright.  Locking levers break, tubes bend and sometimes fall out!

Other makes are Benbo, Giottos, and Induro, Gitzo are at the top of the market if you have deep pockets, the thread for the heads is standard so you can buy legs from one manufacturer, and heads from another.  Manfrottos heads have not suffered the same quality issues the legs have, and they have a really wide range.

And there's another issue which type of head you need!

Macadameane:
I've heard pretty good things about this manfrotto head (of course its for video), but has a lot of nice features and is solid.

http://www.camerastabilizeradvice.com/tripod/174-mew-manfrotto-video-camera-tripod-head/

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