Tripod Lighting Any advice on a good light weight tripod?
Hi I want a new tripod and the one I have serves its purpose for in the house but im restricted to certain shots because of the square flat head (from the Argos) I want something that's light and easy to carry around and not really expensive no more than a £100 preferably any advice would be great thanks I have a sony alpha 330 and my heaviest lens is 70-300 if that makes any difference
With a tripod the old adage 'buy quality - buy once' very much applies, cheap tripods are a pain to use, buying another is just a waste of money.
Manfrotto are good a 190XPROB is a good reasonably priced tripod when coupled with a 486/RC2 ball head, just over your budget, but it will last you for life.
With these you frame your shot, lock the ball head and it stays exactly where you put it, none of the droop or sag you get with cheap ones.
It's not a particularly light one for that you need the carbon fibre version at three times the price.
Virtually every equipment retailer offers so called "commercial" worklights that in actuality are not made with manufacturer commercial grade material. A business always gets what it pays for; so many of the best deals often cause the worst problems at the worst possible times. Bad weather-especially rain-can short circuit retail lighting equipment very quickly, leaving workers already in bad weather completely in the dark. Many cheaper commercial work lights are inconvenient to maneuver and power on. They also offer limited lumens, shining only a bare minimum of light on objects close at hand. Finally, a good many commercial work lights that are too heavy to safely carry while handling other materials, and many tower lights don't offer any real maneuverability on the simple tripods designed to hold them up for hands free operation.
The portable commercial work lights come equipped with 500-watt halogen lamps housed in weatherproof aluminum die-cast light heads. A black powder coating finishes protects the body of each unit, making these worklights both more impact and weather resistant than retail equivalents. This is important to outdoor crews working through all hours of the night who might be facing a sudden downpour, and who could not only suffer a loss of downtime from a shorted lamp, but also an electrical hazard. RLLD work lights offer the best protection against shorts with commercial grade, grounded electrical plugs fitted to a 15' long 18/3 SJT 120volt cord set combining insulation and maneuverability. These lights are very easy to power on and off. The switch is located on the light head itself, making it more accessible to a worker carrying materials that doesn't have an extra hand, or even a moment to spare to fiddle around looking for a switch. Portable, commercial grade worklights also deliver more foot-candles per measured distances. At 5ft they deliver 74.4 foot candles, at 10ft 36.1, and so on down to 6.6 foot candles at 30ft...brighter than some of our parking lot lights at the base of a pole. Consistently in any working condition, the commercial work lights produce a steady, solid 11,000 lumens with an expected bulb life of 2000 bulb hours.
In road crews and underground maintenance work, hands free operation is the rule of thumb for commercial work lights due to safety factors that require crewmembers to have both hands available at all times for tool and equipment operation. Secure lighting mounts on these tripods are of paramount importance, and tower work lights provide this security impeccably. Porcelain sockets with spring-loaded contacts allow for shock absorption while simultaneously holding lamp fixtures firmly in place. The lamps themselves are protected by tempered, shock resistant lenses that insulate the bulb itself with high temperature tubular silicone lens gaskets. This weatherproofs the fixture interior without compromising relamping convenience, as the halogen fixture that mounts on top of the tripod is a single unit in and of itself, included in the order, and requires no assembly of its own to function. The lamp unit features a 500-watt double-ended quartz halogen that comes packed with a protective cushion to make installation quick and seamless and protect against inadvertent damage when workers have to setup lights in a hurry. Our tripod-mounted commercial worklights are all UL listed as well, so organizations in humid areas like the American Gulf Coast can expect consistent and reliable illumination regardless of weather conditions. For extreme conditions, we have dual lamp work lights mounted on towers that operate at 500 watts capable of lighting a 500 square foot area. Because commercial grade mounting offers great flexibility as well as firm and secure grip, worklights can be easily tilted up and down, sideways, and rotated 360 degrees horizontally and 90 degrees vertically. This makes them ideal for any road construction or civil engineering work that might require both a wide field of illumination above ground and a tightly focused beam of light into an underground structure such as a storm sewer or manhole that requires light for workers to safely enter and clean.
I know I am a little late on this, but I am just getting caught up this week on my blogs. Photography tips: YES. Biggest one is to use a tripod. Lighting can also be tricky. Let's talk this weekend.
I know I am a little late on this, but I am just getting caught up this week on my blogs. Photography tips: YES. Biggest one is to use a tripod. Lighting can also be tricky. Let's talk this weekend.