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Old 11th January 2021, 07:18 PM
Alan Clark Alan Clark is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: North Yorkshire
Posts: 1,426
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Mike, your ideas are obviously based on experience, but I have to say I wouldn't use an aluminium tripod, though I have in the past. If you rap the leg of an aluminium tripod with your knuckle, it rings out and vibrates like mad. Do the same with a carbon fibre tripod leg and you get a dull thud and no vibration. Carbon fibre dampens it down. Any fisherman who has speculatively waggled a carbon fibre fishing rod knows this. You get a slight waggle then the rod just stops. This quality makes carbon fibre very useful for a tripod, especially for large format use where unwanted vibrations are a real potential problem.
Mike, have you had a carbon fibre tripod break on you? I have been using mine (a Manfrotto 441) for about 25 years and it has had some pretty rough treatment in that time. It has been stuck hard down into snow, pressed down many times into boggy ground on the North York Moors, used as a walking pole to help me scramble up steep slopes, and is not showing its age anywhere near as much as I am! But I am tempting providence. It will probably fall to bits next time I take it out....

Alan
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