

Be sure to look for the version with the pan and tilt head. That way, it’ll be sturdy enough to ensure there won’t be any camera shake. When making long exposures, be sure to keep this tripod as close to the ground as possible. But that means they’re also not as sturdy as some of the heavier tripods on the market, especially with heavy lens and camera combinations.
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The BeFree series are designed to be lightweight and foldable down to the smallest size possible. Manfrotto BeFree Advanced ( find it on B&H): The BeFree series by Manfrotto are good tripods for traveling. Tripod Buying Guide Manfrotto BeFree Advanced with Pan and Tilt Head. A good tripod will quickly become your best friend in the field. These will make your life so much easier and will save you money down the road. For that reason, I’d suggest paying extra for a pan and tilt head. When I used them in the past, I often ended up with a lot of useless white patches in my panoramas.

It’s very difficult to keep them straight for one image, let alone 5-15. The ball heads will work for long exposures, but when it comes to making panoramas, they’re sometimes more of a hindrance than a help. Some tripods will come as a set, where the manufacturer will throw in a ball head with the set of legs for a reduced price. But maximum height is far less important for photography than minimum height. The lowest height of a tripod is limited by the size of the center column, which many manufacturers use to make their tripods taller. The reason to get the smallest center column possible is so you can get as low to the ground as possible. For that reason, even though they’re nice, I can’t recommend them to landscape photographers who need stability to make a perfectly sharp image over a 10-30 second exposure. Travel tripods often have 5 sections, which allows them to be packed smaller, but they lose a lot of stability in the process. Just be sure the bag is resting on the ground or a rock so that the wind doesn’t catch the bag, and add to the shaking.

The hook is an extremely important feature, in that when you’re taking photos on a windy day, you can attach your camera to the hook to keep it sturdier. What features does a good tripod have?įor most users, I recommend getting a sturdy tripod that has three or four leg sections, the shortest center column possible, and a hook at the bottom. Having the right tripod can make all the difference in your photography. It’s certainly not the most you’ll spend on a tripod - standard ones for video go as high as $5,000 on the used market - but the price tags are not insubstantial.įor instance, my favorite tripod head and tripod leg combination costs just under $1,000, but most users don’t need to spend that much to get a great tripod. But that combination comes with a pretty hefty price tag. The ultimate tripods for landscape photography are both sturdy and lightweight, with a pan+tilt head. But they’re also extremely useful for making panoramas and HDR photographs. The main use is to get a long shutter speed without ruining the sharpness of a photograph. A good tripod is your best friend for landscape photography because it’ll allow you to take photos that would otherwise be impossible. There are a surprising number of versions, materials, and functions that they serve, at all price points.
