[LargeFormat] re tripods

[Brock Nanson]

Philip,

This link shows a few pictures of a set of modern survey legs...

<http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2515721717&category=26204>

From your descripton, they could be survey legs.  They generally have a 
fairly large milled surface on the top, with a hole in the center.  The 
screw to hold the instrument (or camera!) in place is usually in a bracket 
that allows you to slacken the screw and move the instrument around within 
the limits of the hole in the surface.  This is to center the instrument 
over a control point.  The screw is a large diameter, coarse thread that 
won't fit a camera.  I have heard of adapting down to a standard camera 
thread and in fact I considered doing this myself.

The survey instruments have the ability to adjust their level, but you 
always adjust the legs to put the plate close to level first.

The Rees legs are similar to survey legs, but I've never seen a 
photographic tripod as stable as a decent set of survey legs!  But then, 
not many of us use lenses in the telescope length!

Brock

On Thu, 13 Mar 2003, philip.lambert wrote:

> My wooden tripod bears the label "Johnsons of Hendon"  (a well-known
> distributor) with no indication of manufacturer. It is nothing like as
> massive as the illustrations you directed me to and the only clamps are at
> the bottom of each wooden leg-pair to grip the metal lower leg.  I feel sure
> it would support a wooden 5x4 but nothing massive. My former 10x8 Sinar
> metal monorail and un-named wooden 10x8 would have been much more than the
> tripod would bear.  I see it as aimed at serious amateurs with mahogany
> Sanderson bellows cameras.   Prewar/postwar era is my unsupported guess.
> Tripods I saw in the 1950s were all tubular alloy not wood.  I don't think
> it's a surveyor's tripod but only because the standard 1/4 inch Whitworth
> thread carried a pan /tilt head with a protruding pin  fitting a matching
> hole in the tripod top. Would a surveyor use a pan/tilt?
> Cine-camera tripod?  The lack of a central column surprises me.Philip
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Brock Nanson
Kamloops BC Canada