I like this comment, esp. about poor-quality tripods working against you. Maybe I can build on that. Here is a studio case study, of sorts.
I started with the flimsiest, smallest tripod and discovered the need to upgrade, repeatedly, starting with ball-head slippage. Nothing is reproducible w/o a tripod. I used to tie myself in knots shooting macro shots of makers' marks on jewelry but made up my mind to learn to do it better from a tripod, no exceptions. Results? With a tripod-only workflow, I get more -- way more -- keepers. Or maybe tripods bring good luck.
My preferred tripod steadily holds a cross arm and has a head with gearing in six directions, two focus rails for fine gearing in four directions, plus a JustRite for rotating the camera body by 90 degrees. The whole shebang can shoot straight up, straight down, or in between, from scraping the floor to about 7' high, by tweaking the attitude of the center post.
I no longer wonder if my apparatus has drooped or slipped. I rarely need to move the tripod feet, unless changing lenses. I almost never adjust leg height as I have a gear that can lower/raise the head. As Steve has suggested,
tripod use can be less annoying than one might at first suppose.Next on the menu is to rent/test a remote-controlled, motorized focus rail, for a more-stable live view. In other words, during manual focus, shaking of the live view image on the camera monitor or on the external monitor may arise from manually adjusting the focus rail -- distance to subject. Similarly, image shake during manual focusing can arise from moving the lens's focus ring. Either way, this shaking works against fine tuning the focus, especially under live-view magnification. Moreover, I expect that 1/50 mm -- (;>) -- adjustments will add to reproducibility in manual focusing.
Product photography highlights tripod issues, but other disciplines like macro photography can be as demanding. In short, the tripod saves time, boosts confidence, allows more attention to major issues like lighting...and even sets you up for mastering new skills, like focus stacking, bracketing, tilt, and shift.
Steve Perry wrote:
Agree 100% - I'm a big tripod user and tend to have one under my camera most of the time.
I think one of the biggest reasons people don't use a tripod is that they tend to purchase really poor quality ones. A bad tripod works against you and tends to be frustrating. I spend as much on my tripods /heads as many of my lenses and they last forever and are pleasant to work with in the field. IMO if you're spending less than a few hundred on your tripod, then you're doing yourself a disservice.
Agree 100% - I'm a big tripod user and tend to hav... (
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