The center column has long been a ubiquitous feature on tripods.  It provides a number of major advantages in terms of versatility and ergonomics over tripods that lack one, but, has also been known to reduces the tripod’s stability.  Unfortunately, there has been little in depth discussion on why this is or in what scenarios […]

Across camera support equipment, weight rating is the one quantitative metric supplied by the manufacturer that is supposed to be indicative of the performance.  Unfortunately there are no agreed upon standards or definitions as to what this weight rating actually means.  It is simply a made up number by the manufacturer that sounds good to […]

The most common performance metric listed on spec sheets for tripods is the weight rating.  This is supposed to represent approximately how much weight the manufacturer believes the tripod can reasonably support.  The problem is there is no standard definition as to what ‘reasonably support’ means.  Tripod manufacturers use different test methodologies, none of which […]

In order to properly calculate damping times, we need to know the moment of inertia (MOI) for the camera and support system as a whole.  In the previous two posts, we have measured the MOI for tripods and ball heads.  The final piece is what we discuss here, the MOI for the camera and lens […]

In order to accurately calculate damping times, we have been measuring the moment of inertia (MOI) for the various bits of a tripod setup.  In the last post we looked at the MOI of the tripod legs.  Here, I am going to be using the methodology described for measuring the MOI of a camera to […]

In the previous post, I demonstrated my methodology for testing the moment of inertia (MOI) for a tripod.  Initially, we were trying to make the assumption that the inertial mass of the tripod was irrelevant towards calculating the damping time of a vibration.  The data in this post suggests that this is not the case, […]

Our goal in measuring the moment of inertia (MOI) (also known as angular mass) of various camera systems and supports is to be able to make a reasonable calculation of damping time based on the stiffness and damping characteristics of the tripod in use.  In the previous post, we discussed the methodology for measuring the […]

In the previous post on calculating damping time, I showed that in order to complete our analysis, we needed to know what the moment of inertia for the cameras in question are.  The motions of a tripod are predominantly rotational, and so instead of just using the weight of the camera and lens, we need […]