I'm thinking of purchasing this tripod but am concerned about the minimum weight listed in the specs as 4.6 lbs. Does anyone use this rig & have you had any problems balancing the camera?

I use the Blue for XF-105. Strictly speaking, the camera is too light for the Blue head but by positioning the camera forward, on center, or rearward on the head, I can get a natural resting position that works for my needs.

For example, if I'm shooting an orchestra from a catwalk, I just position the camera and plate as far forward on the head as they will go. This puts the camera's COG well forward of the head so at rest the camera points down about 30 degrees, which is just where I need to be shooting. The tradeoff is that if I did for some reason need to shoot high, that would be going against the COG grain, as it were. If I was shooting an air show, I'd just put the camera rearward as far as it could go in relation to the head...but would have to manually adjust the camera/plate position toward center to easily get crowd or other ground shots taken at horizontal or lower.

A more complete solution would be to create a mount to provide a bit more mass and leverage to allow even balancing in all positions. Not sure if anyone has done that. I'm still hoping that Vinten will provided a user-replaceable, lighter spring or a leveraging adaptor for the legions wanting to use a Blue with a very lightweight camera.

I also have a 5-6 year old Vinten Vision 3, for which user-replaceable springs can be ordered. Buying a #1 or #2 spring is on my to-do list.

Both of these tripods are so very smooth. Since the Vision 3 doesn't have the right spring tension now, it isn't quite fair to say this, but it seems that the Blue has even smoother whip pans than the V3. Whenever I do get a light spring for the V3, I'll be posting about how that works out.

Pete
Thanks for the reply. I hope Vinton will do something to fix this situation, I'm going to email them & see what their response is. It should not be that difficult to fix this.

Also see this post I made a while back:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/tripod-sticks-heads/497978-sony-nx70-tinycam-vinten-vision-blue.html

It's a reasonably neat way of adding a litte extra weight if the camera is not too far eblow the minimum payload. Plus the Manfrotto plate system means you are still lightweight if you go handheld.

I hope Vinton will do something to fix this situation

They are.

Interim solutions include:

1. A Manfrotto 577 adapter attached to the slide plate to give a tad more height and ditto weight "up top".

Works for some.

2. If you don't mind getting agricultural, a piece of slab steel, 1/2" thick, cut to the same dimensions as the slide plate, drilled with a clearance hole for a 1/4" X 20 bolt. Replace the existing bolt in the slide plate with an appropriately sized flat headed 1/4" X 20 bolt cut to suit the extra thickness of the slab.

Not the sort of thing you can whip up in your kitchen, but works for some, too.

3. If you just happen to have an ageing hot/ cold shoe mount flash gun lying around in a drawer somewhere (the bigger, the better), load it up with batteries and whack that on the cold shoe of the camera. That works too.

4. Pimp the camera with anything you can think of - external mic, radio receiver etc etc, the higher the better.

Peter,

the #2 spring in the Vision 3 is way too powerfull, from memory.

I have a V3 and a shed load of springs.

For my dinky cam (HV20) I just took the spring out altogether and used a tad of tilt drag, worked an absolute treat.

If you wish to give the spring thing a go, fire a mail to Peter.Harman@VitecGroup.com , he's the Product Manager for Vinten, I'm sure he can sort you with a #1 and #2, he's a good bloke.


CS

Bugger: Mike beat me to it, yet again.

Thanks for the replies. I have an Azden dual channel receiver that I can load up with batteries & use until a fix is implemented.

the #2 spring in the Vision 3 is way too powerfull, from memory.
Thanks, Chris. While I'm at it, I'll probably just order both the #1 and #2 as I intend to have the V3 a long time and one never knows what one may want atop it in the future. It has a #4 in it now that was good for XL-H1 and, if my memory hasn't failed me, is about right for the XF305. Guess I should recheck that before I order.

Mike, as you can tell, you stirred up a bunch of Vinten fans here but I guess I should also mention that Sachtler is coming out with a lightweight head and sticks called the Ace for about $500. Don't believe I've seen a review of a retail-purchased unit yet. With my Vinten bias I'm doubtful something at that price point will be as smooth, but it is designed specifically for lightweight cameras.

Sachtler Ace Fluid Head with 2-Stage Aluminum Tripod 1001 B&H

Hi Pete
I have looked at that tripod & read Peter Blooms review. In the blog following the review a fellow who bought one mentioned a slight kick back when stopping your pan. He said he emailed them & they replied it was a known problem so he returned it. The Vinton Blue costs more but seems to be worth the money.

I use the new Sachtler Cine DSLR head with Gitzo CF legs (and 75mm bowl). An excellent combination, which works well with my DSLR's as well.

Our XF100 team uses a Miller 10 head on Sachtler sticks, and it works very well. Miller rebuilt the head and it balances perfectly with the XF100. No kickback.

I would point out that the "bunch" of Vinten fans (is two a bunch?) responded because the original post was about a Vinten tripod. Of course, other brands should be considered, there's more to life than Vinten's Vision Blue. So they tell me, anyway!

The Sachtler Ace is perfectly suited to cameras like this. The only thing that would throw me are the feet, and I'm sure you could do something about them. I recall that Philip Bloom mentioned the feet as well.

They are.

Interim solutions include:

1. A Manfrotto 577 adapter attached to the slide plate to give a tad more height and ditto weight "up top".

Works for some.

2. If you don't mind getting agricultural, a piece of slab steel, 1/2" thick, cut to the same dimensions as the slide plate, drilled with a clearance hole for a 1/4" X 20 bolt. Replace the existing bolt in the slide plate with an appropriately sized flat headed 1/4" X 20 bolt cut to suit the extra thickness of the slab.

Not the sort of thing you can whip up in your kitchen, but works for some, too.

3. If you just happen to have an ageing hot/ cold shoe mount flash gun lying around in a drawer somewhere (the bigger, the better), load it up with batteries and whack that on the cold shoe of the camera. That works too.

4. Pimp the camera with anything you can think of - external mic, radio receiver etc etc, the higher the better.

Peter,

the #2 spring in the Vision 3 is way too powerfull, from memory.

I have a V3 and a shed load of springs.

For my dinky cam (HV20) I just took the spring out altogether and used a tad of tilt drag, worked an absolute treat.

If you wish to give the spring thing a go, fire a mail to Peter.Harman@VitecGroup.com , he's the Product Manager for Vinten, I'm sure he can sort you with a #1 and #2, he's a good bloke.


CS

Bugger: Mike beat me to it, yet again.

I have sent two messages to Peter Harman as yet not answered. As you see in Chris's post he said "they are" going to do something for the lighter cameras.My messages ask , Are you going to modify the vision blue to handle the smaller cameras and if so will the user be able to do this in the field? I dont mind using the suggested work arounds but if they were going to do something soon I could wait. I am very disappointed in Vintons service & think I should get a reply out of common courtesy. After all I was a potential customer

Mike,

I wrote Peter about this on January 3. This was his response:


Hi Jonathan, sorry, still no spacer but we do have a design. We are at least 9 months away from having it, so not great news. When do you plan to get the XF100?

All the best

Peter Harman
Product Manager, Vinten

Jonathan
Thank you for the reply, that sure seems like a long time for a fix?

Hi all. Seems like the site had kicked me off for a while (it did the same last year too) and I had assumed (wrongly) that nothing was going on. We are always looking at how we can extend the performance range of all our products, and the open dialogue we have here gives us the pointers we need to stay on top. However, we don’t have a solution for the smaller camera on the Vision blue just yet. When we do have firm plans, I will let you all know, but for now I’m afraid there isn’t anything to tell. Unfortunately, you can’t simply replace the spring on a Vision blue without taking the head apart, so we won’t be going down that route.

I’ve seen several home-made solutions over the past 12 months and they all seem to use the Manfrotto adaptors in one way or another. The additional height it offers is quite often enough to bring the smaller cameras just inside the range of the Vision blue.

Thanks Peter.

Question. Is it just a matter of raising the camera higher to make this work, or is it a combination of height and weight?

So if I can raise a small camera up say four inch (just a guess here) would that work? Or does the "spacer" between camera and head need to be weighted to bring everything up to minimum specs.

Thanks.

Jonathan

Er, depends, basically.

On just how much too light the camera is and how low the COG, which is one of those "how long is a piece of string" questions.

Given that it is almost impossible to quantify unless you have a rig to both lift the camera height AND add weight untill it will CB, in which case you don't have a problem, as you have a rig to lift.................

You may now see why designing a "one size fits all" solution isn't quite the walkover you might think at first sight.

Then, of course, there are the trade off's to consider.

Assuming the riser weight remained zero (if you can) you could go on raising a particularly light camera 2 feet off the head untill it CB'd, though keeping such a rig stable under any conditions would be a challenge.

OR

You could leave the camera on the head slide plate and somehow bolt 6 pounds of lead to it, which would have exactly the same effect, but in some respects is even more dangerous than the first option.

So, a combination of the two approaches seems like the way to go - a bit of height gain, a bit of weight gain - it isn't too high and it isn't too heavy.

I set myself the challenge of getting my Canon HV 20 dinky HD cam to CB with my VB, which really was a challenge, as it weighs 1lb 51/2 oz (610gms approx) and has a COG somewhere around the height of a gnats kneecap.

Buying a Manfrotto 577 adapter, which gives a camera lift of 1" (25mm) and a weight increase of 10oz (275gms) told me straight away it wasn't going to be quite that simple.

Scrounging an offcut of 2" X 2" (50mm X 50mm) rhs (square section) steel tubing from a local engineering shop, I drilled the top flat face for 4 X 3/16" screws to hold the 577 and the bottom for 3 X 1/4" X 20 screws.

I now had a 3" (75mm) rise and a weight increase of 1lb 6oz (620gms).

Result? Nada, nope, nowhere close.

What to do - build even higher? Add more weight?

I plumped for more weight, it was easier.

Capped off one end of the tube, filled it with lead shot then capped off the other.

Adapter now weighs 3lbs 13oz (1.75kg) and Bingo, we're in business.

Is anyone but me ever going to want to CB a HV20 or anything similar on a VB?

Don't know, but I know it can be done.

Attached are the adapter without the end caps.


CS

Chris,

Yeah, kind of like wanting to own a Ferrari and want use it to tow a travel trailer.

Thanks for the reply.

Jonathan

Chris
Thanks for the input. My XF-100 weighs close to 3 lbs. with the battery.Do you think your other solution using 1/2 or 3/4 inch plate would work because I have access to a small metal shop.

If you used a slab of 3/4" steel and a 577, you've got a camera lift of 1 3/4" and a weight gain of, er, 10oz plus say, umm, maybe a pound.

So, all up you've got 3 + 1lb 10 oz = 4lb 10oz plus 1 3/4" lift.

Think you'd be pretty bloody close.

Drill and tap the top for 4 X 3/16" CS machine screws (Hint: needs to be very precise placing, you'll need to ream the countersunk holes in the 577 with a 3/16" drill bit to stop them threading and the given recommended drill of 7/64" seems overly small for the job) and the underside for as many 1/4" X 20 as you can cram on (Hint: don't forget the huge heads on those screws when laying out & the odd untapped hole for VHS pins, tap drill 13/64 is spot on).

Should work with any slide plate on the planet, and shed loads of fore/ aft adjustment on the VB plate.

Gotta be worth a shot.


CS