1 Camera and 2 Cameras wedding videos

[Ken Diewert]

Originally Posted by Jim Snow

Ken, I certainly meant no harm with my tongue-in-cheek comment. It was so over-the-top that anyone could tell that it was meant as humor. However, I will spell it out for you to aid your understanding.

Tom's post was very instructive and useful. My post was actually in defense of Tom's post using a bit of dry humor to do so. What WAS intimidating was to have someone start a techno-critique about the setup of his tripod, which was what was about to happen to Tom. I used an obviously facetious post to head off the thread from turning into a tripod "symposium" rather than the thread's topic. Tripod leveling techniques have nothing to do with the thread's topic and I didn't want the conversation to head off in that direction. How would you like to post a picture of a piece of your equipment only to have someone tell you how you were using it wrongly - especially if the purpose of your post had nothing to do with the criticism of your "bad" technique?

As for your didactic "observation" about Santa Clara and UK humor, my wife is British and we spend a lot of time there. The style of humor that I used is much more British than Santa Clara humor. As a matter of fact, I learned that type of dry humor in the UK - they are masters at it. If we have to abandon our sense of humor, we will all live in a sad world. I'm sure Tom is a big boy and doesn't need anyone to explain things for him and take care of him. In fact, I'm sure he doesn't need your patronization at all.

Jim,

Sorry... I guess it's my Canadian sense of humor that didn't get it.

[Warren Kawamoto]

Originally Posted by Tom Hardwick

Exactly right Dave. Warren - take another look at the photo and you'll see that your eye is being drawn by that middle tripod leg. The centre column is indeed vertical and the inbuilt spirit level on the Manfrotto is very easy to use. The markers on the centre stays (insert pic) means it's easy to level.

But as I say, generally this very tall tripod is used for my unmanned camera, so it shouldn't be off doing pans, it should be sitting still and be solid enough to stay there.

tom.

Ahhh... I didn't realize there was a spirit level on the legs. I didn't see any leveling bowl, and the head looked too small to have a built-in level. In my mind, leveling would be very difficult by eye. It all makes sense now that you said there is a level on the legs.

[Dave Blackhurst]

Warren - as long as there are buildings nearby, and you have some clearance to move around, it's not too hard to eyeball the verticals... presuming the buildings/objects aren't tilted <wink>. Particularly if you've got a tripod with a fixed column - gives you a crosscheck on the typical bubble level at the top of the leg section. Just stand back a bit and use the single Mk.1 eyeball to check for consistency and parallelism!

I also find I use the guidelines or edges of the camera LCD/VF to confirm...