A proper tripod. Cheap.
Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 08:44pm
Another thing I picked up at the digital SLR course was how much better a proper tripod could be. For the long exposure shots in the last class I was lucky enough to use Moses’s Manfrotto tripod with its 486RC2 ball head. It was rock solid, yet so easy to adjust … but almost anything would have been an improvement over the $15 tripod that I had.
So I started watching eBay and it wasn’t long until I got a 484RC2 ball head – the smaller version of the 486RC2 but still ample for my camera – for $78 inc postage. This wasn’t much cheaper than it was listed online, but I was happy.
Now I needed something to attach it to and I was lucky enought to come across an older, but unused, Manfrotto 190 tripod that had no bids – because the tripod was pickup only from Frankston. So for one bid and a drive later I had it for $82 including the EastLink tolls.
But it gets better as I didn’t just buy a tripod. I bought a 190 tripod with a 141RC head, which I have recently sold for $56. This means that it ended up costing me $26. ie just over $100 for an excellent tripod and ball head.
I am quite happy with it.
