Clip Leg Or Twist Leg Or Thumbscrew? A Tripod Debate

No matter where you stand on this question, there is one thing certain - you will be firmly on three legs...

Tripod design varies in many respects when it comes to the yoke at the top and the centre column, and the doodads that make up the head, but the actual locking of the legs falls into  three general categories:

1. Twist lock - where there is a collar around each segment that tightens around the leg as you twist it.

2. Clip lock - where some form of lever flips over and either grips or cams the leg tight.

3. Thumbscrew lock - a t-shaped or round knob tightens a clamp on the leg of the tripod.

The designers scatter these different types throughout their ranges as material and/or general fashion dictates. There is also the business of price - some things are cheaper to manufacture than others and when you are pushing out a tripod for $ 50 you need to watch every penny.

Gitzo have always been the top of the tree when it comes to tripods and I cannot remember seeing anything but twist locks on their legs - this is because they are round-profile legs. The Studex 4 and 5 series have a memorable winged screw for the largest segment.

Manfrotto now favour clip locks but for some time used thumbscrews. Their strong point has been the provision of spare parts - sometimes the ham-fisted manage to break the clips.

Promaster? A mixture as they source from different factories and designers.

Three Legged Thing? Twist. Matches their minds.

Cullmann? Again a mixture, though I must say that the twist lock on my Concept One travel tripod is all I could want - it opens and closes easily and holds a mirror-less camera safely.

Is any of this applicable to what you do? If you are always running and gunning you might need the speed of the clip lock - Manfrotto video tripods are the greatest exponent of this. If you need studio steady you can use the twist lock. Still-life products do not run away.

Mind you, sometimes still-life photographers do, but that is another subject...

Hanging Out With The Cullmann, Promaster, and #3 Legged Thing

The current rage for lightweight tripods has relieved a lot of travelling photographers of their weight worries. They buy ones that fold and fold and fold until they can get into the suitcase and as they are being made of increasingly lighter materials it is only a matter of time until they become actually lighter than air and will be stored on the ceiling...

While the light weight is helpful when travelling, it is counter to the principle of anchoring your camera down for the exposure.  That is why Cullmann, Promaster, and Three Legged Thing provide little metal hooks at the bottom of the center column of their tripods.

Their intention is that you will hang a weight there and stabilise the assembly in the wind. Good idea, if you do it right - a problem if you do it wrong. The trick is to have the weight hooked onto the column but resting lightly on the ground.

If you were to just hang a Coles bag on it filled with tins of salmon but leave it to wave in the breeze it would act as a pendulum and set up more vibrations than it quelled. Let it pull down to the ground firmly.

I Read Where...With Three Legged Thing

First off - the opening picture is taken with a special scientific lens by special scientists. It shows an actual breeding colony of tripods - in this case the Three Legged Things. Note how the smaller members of the pod are protected by the larger ones. This is the sort of thing that David Attenborough should get on to. Tripods smell better than gorillas.


The following pictures were also taken with a camera and show the nesting colony of the Pellicula Luxus. It was taken in a cave on 230 Stirling Street, in Perth.

This is to counter the recent assertion from a customer that he had read on the internet that you can't get film any more. Note how the different species nest in their own portion of the cave - not from animosity but to help the mothers find their young. It is said that a roll of 120 Pellicula can distinguish their chick - the 35mm Pellicula - from amongst over 30 different other varieties.

Sometimes I wonder if the people who read the internet do so exclusively at the expense of looking out into real life. 'Course you wouldn't do that, would you friend?

Uncle Dick

Big Frank - The Three Legged Thing...

Sometimes it is impossible to improve upon coincidence. Those of us who have seen tradies in tray-tops  bull their way past us on the highway, only to encounter a Multinova round the next bend ( Flash!) will know what I mean.

Today, when Howard announced that we had a product called Big Frank, I could not believe my luck. What an opportunity to poke fun...turns out I am better off treating it seriously - it happens to be a good piece of equipment.

You'll remember the English firm that designs tripods and then gives them marketing names that are based upon rock musicians? The Three Legged Thing company. From Stagsden, which they assure us is in England, Earth. Yes, they are that twee - perhaps living in Stagsden does it to them or perhaps they are the sort that watch too much telly. Whatever - the products they commission are actually pretty good.

As an aside, please don't think that I regard all English products with unease. Sure, no-one wants to open the bonnet of the car and see the word "Lucas" anywhere near the electrical components. Yet some of us have English hifi components that have worked flawlessly for decades, so there is light at the end of the tunnel. Just not from Lucas.

Back to the tripods. The Big Frank is a carbon fibre one and shares the same design features as the Brian and the Keith: three leg tubes, aluminium yoke, extendable center column, and removable ball head. It is the largest of the range and can carry the most weight. You should have no hesitation putting a large DSLR and large lens on it.

The quick release plate looks to be Arca-sized, but check out the rubber padding on the surface that has been worked into a logo form. I would not be surprised to find this design fillip being picked up by other Chinese manufacturers and being used as advertising on their own products.

Likewise, note the removable protector on one of the tripod legs. Essential if you are going to handle it in extremes of hot or cold.

The last picture is of the tube locks at the bottom of each leg. The knurling is of chunky rubber and is much easier to operate and to secure that those on another well-known tripod from which this one is patterned... much to the annoyance of the other design team, I shouldn't wonder. Still they can sort it out amongst themselves in the back alleys - I've seen the Kung Fu movies.

This tripod carries a 5-year warranty, so if you buy it now you will be covered all the way to the Year of the Gerbil.

Happy New Year 3 From Uncle Dick

Call To The Colours - with Pelican and TLT

I once complained about the dull nature of photographic products intended for professional use - black everything and trying to be desperately discreet. Even put up a cartoon about it - scroll through our Facebook page and you'll find it.

Well, the bright yellow Kata stand that went up today seems to have attracted more colourful birds. Look at the anodized colours on the Three Legged Thing tripod - there is no structural advantage to the blue head with the bronze quick-release plate but it certainly looks cool. And how clever of TLT to incorporate their initials in the actual rubber pad of the plate.

Have a look as well at the rainbow of colours on the Pelican cases. I can understand the basic black and the bright yellow and orange - these would be perfect for high-visibility workplaces or dim studios. Also for Antarctic explorers to keep their sandwiches inside out on the ice.

I can see the khaki model being some form of camouflage in a desert.

But I'm stumped as to the silver colour. Air Force? Stage crew for Liberace? Any thoughts, readers?

The blue one is sheer exuberance. I like it and I think it would make a fabulous lunch box.

More to the point is this picture - it is a good old Pelican square box - a 1300 case. there are three levels of foam in it, two of which are pick-and-pluck so that you can accommodate different sets of gear. Have a look inside there - that's a big old Canon camera with a zoom lens. Once it is snuggled in there and the silicon rubber-sealed lid locked down you can bid defiance to rain, rivers, dirt, and baggage handlers. You can chuck it into the back of a ute and bump it out onto the roadway without any danger.
Pick the right size and you can put it aboard the people section of an airplane...but realistically you can also consign it to the cargo hold and they can stack artillery shells on it.

If you have not treated your gear to a Pelican case you are not getting the best out of your travels. I use a big roll-around one to store and entire studio set in and when I need to stand out from the crowd I crawl up on top of it and do just that. It is that tough. Note; I weigh 68 Kg but I have ambitions to weigh 69Kg after Christmas dinner.

The Tripod Apocalypse - with TLT

I note these days that everything is an apocalypse. It doesn't matter whether you are selling books, television programs, or politicians - every presentation has an apocalypse in it. Even bibles seem to feature one - I guess it gets the younger generation interested in religion. I wonder if there are vampires and zombies in there somewhere?

Well, we here at Camera Electronic are not behind the times - we are behind a number of other things, mind...We have decided to stock a range of tripods for the modern apocalyse photographer - the Three Legged Things.

That is the real name - Three Legged Things. They are marketed by an English firm, based upon the design of a French firm that was taken over by an Italian firm. I believe they are actually manufactured by a Chinese firm. Thus the actual tripods are quite good, even filtered through some pretty strained marketing.

You see, the English firm has decided to name the products after rock stars. I have the " Brian " on the editorial desk right now - I think there is an " Eric " dowstairs. Presumably somewhere there are Johns, Pauls, and Ringos....The old wooden one made form ukeleles is the " George " and you can puzzle over that at your leisure.

The tripods look a great deal like folding travel tripods from G---o, but fitted with Arca-style heads and release plate systems up the top. They are of the twist-lock leg variety and the one here on the desk is a good light carbon fibre type. The startling part is where the makers have elected to turn a coloured anodizer loose on the parts - the triangular metal yoke for the legs as well as the column platform are gold colour, while the ballhead lock knob and the quick-release plate is bronze colour. I passed another tripod on the shop floor that had blue and red.

They are being sold with a tough little cylindrical tripod case - rendered indiscreet by a label that declares that it comes from Stagsden and  that it is equipped or cursed with chicken lips. No, readers, I am not making this up. My imagination is not up to this level of invention - I merely report.

Love them or hate them they are good products as such. They should go some of the way to satisfying the constant request for tiny tripods to support vast lenses and cameras. If you set one up at the next camera club  nude-macro-landscape night you WILL be noticed.