It looks to me that the requirements between common every day use for single shot captures and use for multishot captures (especially so in 16x multishot mode) differ by quite a margin. My experience with multishot, is that the more solid and the less moving parts a support device has, the sturdier it is.
Surely there is no other camera than Fuji GX-680 that would put more demand to the support base if used with a multishot back for 16x captures.... the vibration that the huge mirror of the FUJI induces between shots of the sequence, exceeds by quite a margin any other camera I have ever used and one can't lock the mirror up for as long as the sequence lasts.
I've seen support equipment that is considered to be top class, failing for multishot captures and other that is considered to be of lower level, to perform beautifully. I have to say, I've tested lots of equipment and combinations for both tripods and heads and up to now, I've find none other than the old FATIF tripod and FOBA BALLO that can achieve 100% success on all 16X captures with the FUJI GX-680 and Sinarback 54H (or the Imacon 528c I had before) combination... One has to additionally note that the Imacon 528c has a "movement detector" included in the software (which the 54H lacks) as to ensure that the result one gets is the maximum of what one can achieve.
What I found as being really impressive some years back when I was testing different support equipment for multishot use, is that even equipment that would fail with the Fuji, but succeed with the (much more "quiet") Contax 645, it would fail if only one joint of the tripod was not tighten up to the maximum and then, even the FATIF & FOBA combination fails if a joint is forgotten to be tighten up to the maximum.
Now I'm looking to have another tripod + head combination, so that I can then have the Fuji + Sinarback 54H on one tripod and then my (converted) Sinar P2 & Hasselblad CF-39MS on an other, both ready to use... Clearly ergonomics are the least of factors that concerns me as leveling the camera faster or a few seconds later doesn't matter to me at all... It's sturdiness I care about above anything else... If I can surpass the FATIF + FOBA combination on sturdiness, I will be as happy as one can be.
Hi Theodoros,
You didn't specify level shooting, so the reactions will tend towards flexibility. If you only shoot (close to) level, I'd agree that less is more. Mounting the camera directly to a tripod
leveling base, or on a
leveling head, would introduce the least amount of variables, yet still allow some adjust-ability.
When the camera+lens (aperture closes, mirror acceleration plus deceleration and bounce, shutter leafs closing, or shutter curtains accelerating and decelerating) generates a displacement of mass (maybe out of balance versus the tripod center axis), it will first have to overcome inertia. A heavy camera system with a lot of (added) mass will be harder to get into motion, but it will move (and will be harder to stop). That movement will then start a vibration that decays with each oscillation, but those oscillations will travel through the tripod legs up and down, and a bit sideways. Some of the multiple sources of vibration may even enforce one another if they are vibrating in phase.
The legs should therefore be positioned to resist the vibration directions (vectors) the best they can, and the leg material should absorb the energy (mostly) in its length direction, and not flex or twist. Legs with Carbon fiber walls with multiple crossed fiber layers have good damping properties, and some wooden tripods (some are used for Astronomy) also exhibit excellent properties. Fastening the leg sections will help.
You once wrote about your experiments with "
Sorbothane", which should also help to avoid the vibrations being transferred between camera base or tripod clamp and tripod base. Finding the optimal version (Durometer & Shape Factor) may require some assistance from the supplier.
That still leaves the initial impulse(s) that the camera system generates. There it may help to analyze the source of the vibration in relation to the center of the tripod apex. Simply shifting the camera + lens forward or backward in the clamping position, or adding a lens support, could help to minimize the forces exerted on the tripod/head. A different lens will require re-adjusting of the setup, because the source or the balance will have shifted.
A relatively affordable instrument to assist in analyzing the vibrations, and the way they are affected/reduced by varying certain variables, is
this simple logging unit. It generates a Comma Separated Value (CSV) list of acceleration data, that can easily be imported in a spreadsheet program and, if necessary, plotted. One can also just look for highest amplitudes in the text file, but that wouldn't show how fast the impulses get damped.
Cheers,
Bart
