This telling lies is becoming a habit! (1 Viewer)

My parents have offered to buy me a tripod for my birthday, up to £200 in value, and I would like some recommendations, please.

I like walking so don't really want anything too heavy, but it needs to be stable enough to hold a Nikon ED78 and coolpix 4500 camera.

I looked at the Bird Watching mag. feature, but the non carbon ones seem heavy and the carbon ones expensive! What about the Velbon (or Delta) carbon ones. In Focus stocks Delta, which they tell me are made by Velbon for them, but they come with a head attached and I don't know what it is like. Their advert only says "single action head". (As if I know what THAT is!)

Your assistance would be appreciated.

Chris

It's probably the Velbon PH-157Q head which I find a real pain in the ****. It has one handle which you twist to loosen and then you can move the head up and down and left to right. It sounds great and for general birding it's pretty good but for digiscoping it's uselss. There is a lot of movement when you lock the head and the bird which was one in your view moves up by several centimetres. I'm currently looking into a new tripod and leaning towards the Manfrotto 190 & 128 head.

marek_walford said:

It's probably the Velbon PH-157Q

Click to expand...

Yes, it is the PH-157Q head on this tripod. I have one and would agree completely. Its OK with just the scope but any extra weight will mean a lot of movement.

AndyC

It's not worth skimping on. You need the sturdiest tripod you can manage. For a couple of years I used the 055Nat+128RC head from Manfrotto. To my mind it's the perfect combination for digiscoping - as long as you don't want to carry it too far.

A few months back I upgraded to the Manfrotto 443 carbon fibre+128RC head in order to save a bit of weight. It's well worth the extra money and should hopefully last a lifetime. Combined with a Mondell harness/sling it's not too bad even for me with arthritis to carry for a couple of miles.