It’s a question I’ve asked myself a number of times. Do I need a tripod? Yes, I have bought a few over the years but, at the time of purchase, I’ve seriously asked the question – do I ‘need’ it?
What is a Tripod?
This might seem a daft question to many, but it’s worth having a review.
In simple terms, a photography tripod is a gadget that is usually portable and has three legs that fold out. Each leg is usually independently telescopic in two, three or more sections. This enables the gadget to stand level on uneven ground. At its top, there is usually a special holder or, commonly, a headstock that receives and locks an adaptor plate that fixes your camera. Some may have a gripper device for smaller cameras – like your smartphone.
If fitted, the headstock allows the movement of the camera in all directions and either locks in the desired setting or is able to pan (follow a moving target – like a bird or car).
Tripods come in many sizes, materials and prices. Simple small plastic tripods can be bought for a few pounds and are really handy to prop up a smartphone. At the other end of the scale are tripods for professional photographers and videographers. These are typically made of lightweight, tough materials, for a robust and sturdy stand that may get daily use. These cost many hundreds of pounds.
Headstocks are often provided with a tripod but have a market of their own when sold separately. They alone can cost hundreds of pounds.
Most photography hobbyists or enthusiasts, like me, go for something mid-range. I do a lot of walking to get to my chosen photo location, so I want a tripod that I can easily carry with all my other gear. Yet, I want it to be sturdy enough to withstand gusts on a breezy day. I need to be able to unfold the legs and adjust them easily, It has to be able to mount my camera quickly. Importantly, I need to be able to move my camera and frame the subject with ease, which often includes levelling the horizon of a seascape in the viewfinder. Just some things to think about, but you will have your own needs and options.
Tripod Variants
Monopods – there are also many on the market, and I have one in the shape of a walking pole. It has a screw fitting at the top that accepts a headstock. This is really useful on longer walks, where the weight of my tripod is just too much. Until recently I used the pole frequently and, when needed, I would pop the headstock on and snap away. However, walking with one pole, as I have experienced, isn’t so good. Bad for the hips. So I tend not to use it so much nowadays. Look out for tripods that have a removable leg that magically converts to a monopod. Yes, I have one of them too. I can grab a spare leg when needed.
Look out for tripods and camera holders with flexible legs that can be bent and manipulated to a desired setting. Also, gripper stands or adaptors that attach to a desk or shelf can be very useful for setting up a product photo shoot.
What Use is a Tripod?
As you get into photography, regardless of your camera, there will be times when a very steady hand will be jolly useful. You give it your best shot at taking a low-light scene or maybe a close-up (macro) shot, but the results are slightly blurred. Not at all pleasing. As much as you try to steady your hand and camera, it just will not work.
This is where a tripod can prove its worth. When the subject needs a sharp focus a tripod or monopod can be used to keep things steady during the split second that the camera shutter is open. In low lighting conditions, for example, taking macro shots, or capturing the night stars, the shutter will likely be open for longer. It’s essential to keep everything rock solid still to get the best sharpness your camera and lens can afford.
I use a small cheap and cheerful tripod for my smartphone. I have a little Bluetooth device to trigger the camera remotely. This is useful for taking shots that I might like to be in – get-together events, selfies and such like. The resulting photo has all of me in the frame – including the usually hidden arm assigned to the selfie stick.
Other applications include using your camera to digitise older photo prints. Set things up with a good light source and you can get into a good workflow, taking digital copies of printed photos. You can also set up scenes to take pictures of products that you want to promote. Again, employ good lighting and background tools and props and set up a workflow process to capture a batch of products.
Some tripods allow you to invert the centre stem so that the camera hangs below it. This is useful for getting down to the ground level for either macro or low-level-perspective landscapes.
Can I Manage Without a Tripod?
In short, yes, for many scenarios.
Landscapes – when I’m out walking and a scene opens up in front of me, I reach for the camera. I won’t have time to muck about with a tripod or monopod. I’ll use a good hand-hold stance to keep the camera steady. Sometimes I’m lucky and get a fence post or a stable mass like a wall or rock that I can use to perch the camera on or lean against. Another good trick is to use the shutter timer – on your camera or your smartphone. Just a couple of seconds helps to keep things steady and nicely framed while the shutter automatically releases.
Landscapes tend to have wide coverage and are not so demanding of pin-point focusing. Sometimes though, getting fairly close foreground and distant background into focus together requires a small aperture. This means less light and much more of a need to keep the camera still. It can be done, but it’s quite a skill to learn and achieve it. A tripod or monopod would certainly help in this situation.
If there is plenty of light, most shots can be taken with a hand-held camera. As the light fades or artificial light is required, a tripod helps things along beautifully. You can push up the ISO setting but at the expense of the resulting photo getting ‘grainy’. Modern cameras are quite forgiving and most can be set up to ISO 1000 before the degradation becomes noticeable on an A4-sized photo. That’s quite a lot of scope.
When I Need a Tripod
There are certain things in my line of photography that simply cannot be done without a tripod or, at least, a monopod. Focus or exposure stacking is a good example. I will snap a few photos of the same subject with either various focal distances or various exposure settings. Once home, I bring these together in my processing software as a stack to merge the photos into one. This process helps to achieve the best focus or lighting range. It’s vital that the camera doesn’t move while taking the snaps.
This is just an example of what I do. Your requirements may be quite different.
What Tripod is Best for Me?
Requirements Gathering
Choosing the right tripod for your needs requires you to think about your requirements very carefully. A good approach might be the MoSCoW method…
- Must haves
- Should haves
- Could haves
- Won’t (or Would) haves
This approach, while used in IT and Business circles, is useful for many of life’s requirements – it gets us to focus on what is really important in a very simple structure.
How do we know what we want? That’s often a catch-22! Aside from the obvious things like it needs to stand upright and hold a camera, there are many other things that you probably won’t know until you get more information.
Information Gathering
To understand the many features of tripod offerings on the market and what they do, we need to dig a bit deeper and find out about them.
A great deal of information can be found online or with outlets like Amazon. Go through a list of tripods on offer and it’s possible to get a good feel for what each does.
You can get lots of detail from what the reviewers are saying. A well-rounded review is a great source of information. Be cautious of some review sites. Like me, they are likely affiliated with certain suppliers, and so they list only what the supplier can provide.
Photography magazines and books are very helpful (remember your library – they provide a wonderfully rich and free information source). They can be used to explore how to use a tripod from the basics upwards, including many quirky techniques to try.
Be a little wary of articles and adverts for tripods in photographic magazines. Most of those covered are in the higher price range, although you may not realise that until you look elsewhere. Let’s not forget that these magazines are paid by the manufacturers for both advertising and many of the articles that they publish. So, they are biased. Magazines tend to go for just three or four makes out of the hundreds available on the market.
If you think I’m being a bit OTT in this section, there is a good reason. As mentioned at the start, prices vary considerably. If your requirements can be met for under £50, why spend any more? Seriously, you can spend £200 to £300 easily if your trail of thought is ‘the more it costs, the better it is’. It really isn’t!
What Did I Buy?
After much research of my requirements – mostly based upon the experiences and mistakes I had gathered from previous tripods – I settled on a K&F Concept model. The one I bought is still on sale…
…although, I paid around the price of these later models, which are 3 inches shorter when fully extended. They have 3 or 4-section lever locks on the legs rather than 5-section spiral locks. Personally, I think these later models might be better…
My requirements
- Must hold the weight of my DSLR and the largest lens, flash and other accessories
- Must have an adaptor plate to fit my camera to allow it to easily attach to the tripod’s headstock
- Must be able to fold out and extend the legs fairly quickly and with ease
- Must be able to set the legs to the same length to start off, and adjust as necessary when upright
- Must be robust and strong enough to withstand gusts and fairly tame rivers or seawater
- Must extend to my eye level when standing – it’s uncomfortable being hunched over for too long
- Must be able to lock the head at any angle and be able to pan smoothly
- Must be able to adjust and lock the centre stem easily – I had one that would occasionally crash down
- Must not be too heavy – no greater than 1.5kg
- Must fold down to a good size for portability
- Must not rust or corrode – I do lots of coastal photography and walks
- Must be good value for money
- Should be able to be weighted (hang something under it to keep it steady in windy conditions)
- Should have a shoulder bag for transport and storage that can attach to my backpack
- Should have an indicator to level the camera
- Could have a detachable leg to use as a monopod
- Could have a reversible centre stem for low-level photography
- Could be extra light-weight if it remains robust in the field
- Won’t get brittle parts that snap after a while
- Won’t have little screws or rubber feet that can drop out/off and get lost
Read another photography gear guide of mine: Camera Gear: A Bag’s a Bag!
Thanks for reading. Please leave a comment about your tripod experiences below.
