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Tripods -- Cheap and Compact
The Perfect Travel Tripod Making sure the surface wound would be well out of
cosmetic sight, Popular Photography’s senior lab technician, David Phung, made a
short but incisive scalpel cut into the black leg, slicing through its skin, baring it to
shiny, base metal. He applied voltmeter probes to each end of the cut and the digital
voltmeter reading jumped upward.
"It’s metal, alright," Phung reported, confirming what I hoped was true about the
Velbon Maxi 343E tripod. In these days when plastics seem to be substituting for
all materials, I found it a relief that one of my specifications for the tripod I had not
stressed was indeed as I wanted it—metal construction.
The Perfect Travel Tripod To jog your memory, my association with the Maxi (for
short) tripod began many years ago when I cried in the three-legged wilderness for
an ideal travel tripod no more than 20 inches when folded, weighing 32 ounces or
less, which could swiftly extend in 45 seconds to SLR eye level. Legs should be
independently extendable so the tripod could be leveled on uneven ground. The tips
should be threaded rubber spikes to steady the tripod on all terrain. And, yes, it had
to be sturdy. Such a tripod, I thought, should prove desirable for every amateur
photographer who balked at toting his regular tripod on trips. Even tripod haters
might have second thoughts about a tuckaway tripod that could guarantee sharp
photos. Many tripods came close to my ideal but usually fell short in some vital
aspect. Sometimes they were the very devil to set up and take down. Most were too
short. The photographer would have to bend his knees to see through the finder.
Maneuvering the camera to an upward or downward angle proved very
inconvenient. Some years ago, Velbon president Koichiro Nakatani said he was
determined to make a tripod to my specifications. At photokina last year, he
presented me with the first sample of the Maxi—32 ounces, a little under 18 inches
folded and 62 inches fully extended. The 62-inch extension had been the major
stumbling block, but Velbon engineers had found a new nesting tube system that
provided extra extension of each telescoped leg. The tripod was well made and
beautifully finished. April delivery was promised. April and most of May rolled by
before a shipment arrived in the U.S. Naturally I was anxious to compare my
preproduction sample (which appeared to be Japanese-made) with actual Chinese
production. Could Velbon USA send one? "Sorry," said a Velbon spokesman,
"they’re all sold out. We expect another shipment in a few weeks."But I did get one
that very day, thanks to one of Pop’s editors who handles new product write ups
and had the foresight to ask in advance for a sample. Pulling rank (after all I was
the one who got the tripod ball rolling), I glommed onto the editor’s sample. I went
over it piece by piece and inch by inch. Every knob, lever, flip lock, rubber tip and
the entire ball head, down to the attractive cork composition platform insert, were
identical to those on the preproduction sample. The tripod operated with the same
smoothness. Price? Reliable stores have started advertising the Maxi for $90, street
price. There was one difference between pre- and actual production models—the
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