Tripods Census

[Victor Nhat Nguyen]

Just want to know what tripods+heads you guys use and maybe a quick review of them.

I'll go first. I own Manfrotto 055xprob sticks. It's decent, I have no problems with it.

For head I have manfrotto 501 and it's a terrible head. You can't achieve extremely smooth moves with it and it's just unstable with a slider on top. Even though I hate it... I think I'll still use it for years to come.

 

[Josh Bass]

whatever head you get, i pretty much guarantee you that you want a TRUE FLUID HEAD. heres where it gets tricky...there are apparently quite a few heads out there that say "fluid" or something to that effect when they are in fact grease heads. you want to be able to pan or tilt at any speed smoothly, and going into or coming out of a dead stop, with no issues and no "stickiness". as far as i know that means a true fluid head, and these are generally not cheap even for lighter cams. also get one rated for more weight than you think you need so when you add things onto the cam (wireless mic transmitter, light, etc..) youre not over the weight limit.

to answer your poll, i have a sachtler dv4. was about $1k with sticks. rated for 11 pounds. works great (still! probably got it in 2003) EXCEPT i recently noticed how hard it is to go from a totally locked off shot to moving without getting a bobble cause the head has no counterbalance. so look for a counterbalance too.