Fred Miranda wrote:
Can you believe it was discontinued? This is one great tripod. They are ready to roll out the new GT3542. As far as I can tell from their website, it will not go as low and will be a little heavier...
Are you sure about that. I don't belive it's discontinued. And they still sell it in every shop I use when buying tripods.
Remember that the GT 3541 and similar numbers exist in both the Systematic tripods and Mountaineer tripods series. And the Mountainer tripods have a couple of new which ends with a number 2.
If not telling if the tripod is a Systematic or Mountaineer it's very easy to look at the wrong numbers
Lars Johnsson wrote:
Are you sure about that. I don't belive it's discontinued. And they still sell it in every shop I use when buying tripods.
Remember that the GT 3541 and similar numbers exist in both the Systematic tripods and Mountaineer tripods series. And the Mountainer tripods have a couple of new which ends with a number 2.
If not telling if the tripod is a Systematic or Mountaineer it's very easy to look at the wrong numbers
I have a tripod similar to Sunny's, the 1325 with no center column, same ballhead in fact. My other option is a much lighter GT1530 WITH center column, but I can reverse it so the center column and thus camera extend down below the legs. I can go as low as I like that way. I am interested in that gorillapod though. I can see its usefulness, wrapped around an ice ax planted in the snow, or a couple ski/trekking poles to gain some height. Is the Joby ballhead any good, and if not what head would be appropriate? I suppose you can get a lot of adjustment out of the legs alone sans head.
ryanpfleger wrote:
I have a tripod similar to Sunny's, the 1325 with no center column, same ballhead in fact. My other option is a much lighter GT1530 WITH center column, but I can reverse it so the center column and thus camera extend down below the legs. I can go as low as I like that way. I am interested in that gorillapod though. I can see its usefulness, wrapped around an ice ax planted in the snow, or a couple ski/trekking poles to gain some height. Is the Joby ballhead any good, and if not what head would be appropriate? I suppose you can get a lot of adjustment out of the legs alone sans head....Show more →
Ryan,
I suggest that you get used to your new 24 TSE II before considering more gear for tilt /shift shooting. There are several other issues you will discover when trying to adjust tilt/focus when very close to the ground. Such as: difficulty seeing through the viewfinder or even getting close enough to the LCD without laying in wet sand, or needing two hands for fine tilt adjustment, one for the lock knob and one for the tilt knob while simultaneously watching the LV 10X, or not making out the LCD due to glare, or operating your camera upside down with the shutter against the ground, or using an angle finder C at 2.5x and never seeing the corners of the frame for tilt adjustment, or using an axillary LCD and having the HDMI or remote cable get in the way of the ball head clamp, or trying to adjust GND filter position, or...... Plenty of time to practice and come up with your work around strategies for various situations.
When you get your 24 TSE II lens, practice both shift and tilt in your living room or hallway and in your drive way to become familiar with the controls in a normal shooting position as well as at low angle. These fine adjustments can be difficult to maximize and you don't want to be struggling when the good light is fading fast. Read the article I linked to in this thread regarding tilt and focus.
After several months of use you will get a feeling for what works for your style of tilt/shift shooting. Enjoy your new lens, it is among Canon's best.
Mike K http://www.fototime.com/1538F9F99DA6F9A/orig.jpg
As for putting the tripod close to the ground, I've had great success with the big Giottos CF tripods, which are basically a knockoff of some Gitzos but with the funny column thing. This shot shows it shooting out of a car window: http://www.phototrek.org/Travel/Tower/2008-06-02/0004-b.jpg
Great for lightning storms. You can just imagine that you can use it turned upside down and then reach literally to the ground, with the hot shoe touching the dirt. I don't have a shot of that online, but it works. The tripod is insanely sturdy. I use it for nigh exposures where I want the firmest footing, and when I need to do bizarre things with the column. For daily life I use the RRS TVC-24 with BH-40, which is lighter but nowhere as flexible.
Both are great lenses but the TSE24II is my favorite lens ever. The thing with the 24 is that you can shift and flat stitch to get a field of view close to what you could get from the 17. (Yes you can flat stitch the 17 too...which is a ridiculously wide field of view and, while pretty cool, is in reality not often very practical for what I'm shoting) Typically I flat stitch horizontally with the camera in portrait orientation but on occasion I flat stitch vertically
RobDickinson wrote:
I have the same issue! . . . How easy is it to stitch TSE shifted images, I understand you need to move the camera rather than the lens when shifting? How is that acheived?
In quickly skimming this thread I don't see an answer to this question. Here's an article on how it's achieved.
In using the 24mm TS-EII I actually haven't noticed a parallax problem. Which could be because I've mostly done vistas with it, not much in the way of close foregrounds.
It's always best to shift the back (or in this case, the camera) for a stitched image, but in many images it doesn't matter. The more significant three dimensional detail you have close to the lens, the more you're going to be bitten by parallax. I use marks on an RRS camera plate to slide the camera left and right (or up and down) to compensate for the lens shift. As long as I'm within half a millimeter or so of being right on, everything stitches perfectly using PhotoMerge. For many images, I just don't bother and they still stitch fine, but it does depend on the type of image you're shooting. The higher the camera position, the more tolerance you're typically going to have. The great thing about having a digital camera is that you can go out and shoot a few test images to see how well your own images are going to work and then work out the technique that is required for your vision.
Peter Figen wrote:
It's always best to shift the back (or in this case, the camera) for a stitched image, but in many images it doesn't matter. The more significant three dimensional detail you have close to the lens, the more you're going to be bitten by parallax. I use marks on an RRS camera plate to slide the camera left and right (or up and down) to compensate for the lens shift. As long as I'm within half a millimeter or so of being right on, everything stitches perfectly using PhotoMerge. For many images, I just don't bother and they still stitch fine, but it does depend on the type of image you're shooting. The higher the camera position, the more tolerance you're typically going to have. The great thing about having a digital camera is that you can go out and shoot a few test images to see how well your own images are going to work and then work out the technique that is required for your vision....Show more →
That's interesting, but poses a couple of problems. One is if you want or need to tilt or swing, this puts that behind the point of attachment. The other is that it looks like it's clamping to the focusing ring itself, which would make focusing difficult and two, not really sure if I'd like to support a 1 series camera by the helicoid.
Here is a lens collar made specifically for the 24 and 17 TSE lens mounts. It looks pretty slick and still allows tilt. However mounted vertically as shown, it only allows horizontal shifts. To do vertical shifts one has to rotate the tripod standoff to horizontal.
Mike K wrote:
Here is a lens collar made specifically for the 24 and 17 TSE lens mounts. It looks pretty slick and still allows tilt. However mounted vertically as shown, it only allows horizontal shifts. To do vertical shifts one has to rotate the tripod standoff to horizontal.
Mike K wrote:
Here is a lens collar made specifically for the 24 and 17 TSE lens mounts. It looks pretty slick and still allows tilt. However mounted vertically as shown, it only allows horizontal shifts. To do vertical shifts one has to rotate the tripod standoff to horizontal.
