How to choose an All-purpose Tripod

Tripods are one of the most important accessories inside a photographer’s bag. No matter what tripod you buy, you need to find one that’s stable, versatile and sturdy to support your gear. Since photography is such a diverse craft, it’s recommended to own at least two tripods. However, looking for several tripods can be burdensome and expensive. That’s why you should look for an all-purpose tripod that can satisfy most of your needs.

As you may know by now, tripods provide support for your camera. They provide significantly sharper images and allow repeatability and critical adjustments not possible when you handhold your equipment. Let’s review a few instances where a tripod can make a difference:

• • Self portraits and group portraits
  • Macro photography
  • HDR photography
  • Time lapse photography
  • Low light situations such as indoor, moon, star trails and aurora photography
  • Slow shutter speeds when creating water motion blur
  • To stabilize super telephoto lenses

 For landscapes that require small apertures for maximum depth of field

As we mentioned before, photography is diverse. Unless you want to buy a tripod for each shot you take, find a tripod that can adapt to most of your photographic needs.

What to look for in an all-purpose tripod?

 Stability: Finding a stable tripod should be your number one priority. If the tripod shakes or vibrates you will not get sharp images. 

Versatility: An all-purpose tripod should be able to get close to the ground for low angle shots and extend high enough for eye-level and high angle shots. At the same time, the tripod should be portable. Some tripods come with legs that can turn into monopods. Monopods are great when you need to get into a tight space or tripods are not allowed.

Ease of use: A tripod should be easy to set up and take down. Thus, look for a tripod with a good automatic leg angle locking mechanism.

Load capacity: An all-purpose tripod should support heavy cameras with telephoto lenses. 

Companies like Sirui offer a full range of all-purposes tripods to choose from. For instance, the stable Sirui N-3204X can be as tall as 69.3 inches (176 cm), or as low as 5.9 inches  (15 cm) from the ground. This tripod can be folded to only 20.1 in. (51 cm). What’s great about this tripod is it only weighs 4.2 lbs (1.9 kg) but it has a load capacity of 39.7 lbs.

If you need a smaller, more compact tripod, Sirui also has 1 and 2 series versions of the NX tripod.

All NX Series tripods have a unique leg mechanism that allows you to flip the legs up 180°. This mechanism allows the tripod to be folded significantly smaller than comparably sized tripods with conventional leg designs. Another feature that adds versatility to this tripod is the tripod can be converted into a monopod. Thus, you can have stability and flexibility to move around, even in tight spaces. Also, you can quickly change the new split center column into a short center column for low angle shots. 

For more information about this tripod visit: http://argraph.com/Sirui-EN-Series-Tripods.html#top2