Tripod Conundrums

Oh, how I should have listened to the wise photographers who told me to invest in a good tripod and ballhead from the get-go!

I have a few pressing issues that affect my tripod/head purchase decisions right now:

1. Limited budget. I really can't spend a whole lot of money on a good, professional tripod and head at the moment. I'd like to stay under $100, if possible.

2. I currently have two tripods: one is a cheap retail store tripod and pan-head. It appears that I could remove the existing head and mount another if I wanted to. The other is a 20 year old Slik Universal U212 (at least, that's what the leg says) whose head appears useless to me. However, the tripod itself may be useful. (It was my dad's old tripod that I think he used with a video camera, many moons ago).

I'm thinking of just getting a decent entry level ballhead and using one of the two existing tripods. The cheap tripod is light enough to carry with me hiking in search of birds, but is a bit flimsy. The old tripod looks sturdy as all heck, but weighs a ton and wouldn't work well from a portability standpoint - at least not for hiking.

I'd love to go for a Bogen Manfrotto tripod and head setup, but those run closer to $200 even at the entry level. At the same time, I don't want to spend $100 on something I'll end up throwing in the closet and not using.

I need something that will support at least 6 lbs. My spotting scope weighs close to 4 lbs. My camera weighs a little over a pound, plus the adapter and T-mount. 6 lbs gives me plenty of wiggle room. My cheap Sunpak does support up to 6.6 lbs, so I may be able to use those legs with a new head.

I think a good compromise may be to get an entry level Bogen ballhead and use one of my existing tripods. Then, if the existing tripods don't work out, I can cough up the rest of the cash and get a Manfrotto tripod to go with the ballhead.

Does anybody have any tripod advice for a struggling birder/photographer who wants to do some digiscoping on a budget? :)

The Digiscope Setup

Santa brought me a spotting scope and camera adapter for Christmas :) w00t!

There haven't been many birds out today to test it out, but I did get a few shots this morning. Here's a female house finch:



These small birds fill about half the frame with the magnification of the spotting scope, versus maybe 1/10th of the frame with my 300mm Canon lens. I think the shots are likely more crisp out of the 300mm lens, but with the extreme cropping required for close-ups, distortion occurs. It's nice to be able to preserve most of the detail of the shot even after cropping by using the digiscope setup.

I need to do some research on the best camera settings when using a scope. I'm currently using aperture priority mode, so that the camera chooses the correct shutter speed. The aperture shows as 00 on the camera, and of course it is manual focus as no lens is attached to the camera. Focusing is done via the scope.

The camera attaches to the scope via a camera adapter and a T-ring in place of the camera lens.

It's a little awkward trying to look downward into the camera viewfinder. I can see why people have said that it's easier to digiscope with a point-n-shoot camera, particularly one with the flip-out rotating LCD screen for those odd angles. I bought that adapter for the scope, too, and will try it with my Canon Powershot A70.

For working indoors (shooting through the window), I think the dSLR setup is OK. It's probably a bit clumsy in the field, but I'll have to try it. The point-n-shoot setup will likely be easier for field shooting.

The pictures I've taken so far have tended toward over-exposed. I'm shooting in RAW, so fixing that is simple in Adobe Lightroom, but I'd like to figure out how to get it right in-camera. Unfortunately, there are no test subjects in my tree right now, as landscapers are outside doing who-knows-what, scaring the birds away.

I'm very encouraged by the shots I've been able to get so far! It will take some practice to learn to maneuver the scope on the tripod (I also see now why all of the photography books I read encouraged spending money on a good ball-head tripod... my $35 3-way pan head is hideously clumsy and difficult to maneuver. It's fine for taking family portraits, but very difficult to use when trying to follow a bird moving around in a tree). A good tripod will likely be my next semi-major purchase.