For those who ask: Will tripod X support camera Y?
The answer is yes, it will.
Manfrotto 190 at full extension, not levelled but wiggled loosely into gravel. Ballhead Is a Gitzo 1177, levelled by eye. That`s 9 housebricks, I don`t know the weight but it`s more than YOUR camera
jcolwell wrote:
What happens with 10 bricks?
Nobody knows--he onlly had 9 bricks.
The more serious answer is that there is a lot of stress on the spider. The loose gravel does nothing to keep the legs from spreading. This means the heavy load is trying to spread the legs, rather than the feet forcing to load straight down to the ground.
There was a thread about a Gitzo that actually broke the spider because the load was forcing the legs apart in heavy snow.
I had to stop the experiment because the tripod was starting to slip on the uneven gravel as the feet began to dig in. At this point the ball started to slip as the weight moved off axis and then I lost interest. There is a very rare, almost unknown version of that ballhead called "The Spinal Tap" model. It goes up to 11.
