I witnessed something very annoying and depressing last night.

I pulled over to shoot a sailboat stuck in the mud after low tide. I screwed on my 70-200L with a 1.4 extender to my 1DS3 and mounted in from the lens collar to a RRS BH 55 ball head mounted to a carbon fiber Gitrzo series 3 LSV tripod (It's made for a video recorder).

I noticed that there was so much vibration after the shutter released, as I looked through the view finder, that I knew the images would not be sharp (1/30th). I tried Mirror Lock, and that was better, but still far too much vibration. It was sickening.

I'm going to mount the same set up on my old 3221 Manfrotto aluminum tripod with a 3039 Super Pro Manfrotto head.

Using my 5D and the 70-200 (without the 1.4 extender) I never noticed that much shutter vibration on either tripod set up.

It was like watching a tuning fork. I actually had better dampening resting my hand on the camera while using the remote. This usually results in more shake.

Has anyone else noticed this sort of thing?

Any suggestions?

You have two problems here. The first is that the tripod collar isn't that strong. The second is that there is a bit of play in the connection between lens/TC and camera/TC. What helps quite a bit is mounting lens and camera to something like a macro rail. Or you use this:
http://reallyrightstuff.com/rrs/Customkiti...nnanWardPkg&eq=

(I'm not sure if they have a smaller version.)

I built something like that from wood a few ago and used it with the 300mm f2.8 and stacked 1.4x and 2x converters. It did help quite a lot.

-- Tilo

[quote=dwdallam,Aug 4 2008, 08:13 AM]
I pulled over to shoot a sailboat stuck in the mud after low tide. I screwed on my 70-200L with a 1.4 extender to my 1DS3 and mounted in from the lens collar to a RRS BH 55 ball head mounted to a carbon fiber Gitrzo series 3 LSV tripod (It's made for a video recorder).




I would suggest that the problem lies with the carbon fibre.

In my experience, the only way to hold something heavy on a tripod is to sling something even heavier underneath the damn thing. In other words, you simply cannot do without the benefits of pure mass and inertia.

I have a Gitzo 410 which I had originally bought when I got the Pentax 6x7 ll. Unfortunately, it wasn´t long after that that I ran into my first little heart adventure. Now, some five or six years later, I can hardly carry the damn thing, it weighs so much. So I don´t. Obviously, Gitzo tried to catch a wider range of client than the studio and LF ones and the carbon fibre input became the photographic equivalent of the change in fin designs of 50s cars. I think that might well be a mixed metaphor, but who gives a damn, you probably know what I mean: a marketing ploy.

What has proven very useful to me, is the carrying about of a very much lighter Slik, which I use sometimes with its third leg not extended. That allows for something much more stable than a monopod and possible movement in fewer planes.

Rob C

I take most of my shots with the body mounted to a Gitzo CF 1325 and noticed early on that the legs vibrated after the exposure. I then went to mirror lock and use it unless I'm shooting at 1/60 or faster. With the mirror locked up I got very sharp images with my 1v film camera and now with my 1ds3. This includes macro shots of flowers where every detail is sharp (at the point of focus), and 20 x 24 blowups are made. These are usually shot at something like 1/8 at f16, or slower. So I know that CF tripods can yield sharp photos.

Have you verified that mirror lock isn't enough, by making large prints or zooming in on the screen? BTW, the collar on my 70-200 2.8 does loosen up after a drive, so I always make sure that it is tight.

8/10 I posted the above just before I left for a week trip to Kings Canyon NP / Sequoia NF and realized on the plane (no idea why I was thinking about this) that I forgot to add that I also use a cable release or if I'm feeling lazy, the 2 second timer. Anyway, it looks like you have solved your problem and this thread has gone on to much more interesting things.

They do have a smaller version of the long lens plate, but it's just the one I have--the plate for the 70-200L. It's the only one they make for that lens.

I'll check to see if the collar is tight also, good tip.

Hanging a heavy bag from the center column should also help. The frustration is this: I've never, ever noticed this before shooting with my 5D and the 70-200L. I didn't use the extender though.

Yes, I know it's unacceptable because I took a few shots with my hand resting on the tripod, which made the images a lot sharper, but not as sharp as the 70-200 is capable. At anything over 2 seconds or faster than 1250th I'll not have a problem, but that sweet spot in landscape at between 1/8 and 1/60th or so is where it really hurts.

The tripod collar isn't that strong? Are you kidding? it's about 1/1/4 inches wide. It's not the one that came with it. I bought another center column for it.


http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/4890...pid_Carbon.html

Tripod:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/4759...er.html#General

This setup was HIGHLY recommended by all who responded when I was researching a new tripod and head. Are you saying it's "top heavy" maybe?

I'll try all your suggestions and also take the TC off and try it with use the 70-200 mounted.

You all realize that the BH55 is the biggest head RRS makes, right? I mean the BH55 mounted to the LSV above is a hefty package. I think it's weighs in at like 8 lbs!!!!

If you don't want to hang a heavy bag. Thread a strong elastic stap through the bottom of the centre column and stand in the loop to exert down force on the tripod without transmitting vibration to the camera.

If that doesn't work, make sure the tripod - camera interface is secured.

If that doesn't work try a three way geared head (Ball heads are not the only way to mount the camera).

Watch out for wind - that can influence that stability sufficient to affect image quality.

OK.

It isn't wind vibration though. I can see this "hit" just as the shutter goes off, and the view finder looks like a tuning fork for about 1/2 second.

You shouldn't be able to see the viewfinder as the shutter goes off if you are using mirror lock up.

If are using mirror lock up and still see vibration, you are seeing it from the mirror slapping back down, which takes place post exposure.

Check the plate/collar and collar/lens interfaces, they are most likely to be your weak points.

I agree, the Gitzo GT3530LSV and BH-55 is a very stable combo, more than capable of handling the 70-200 + 1.4 + camera. Just make sure that the legs are planted on firm ground.

I'm talking about the lens collar, Canon calls it Tripod Mount Ring. Mine certainly flexes a bit when I put a hand on the lens (there is at least 10 times the flex in the lens collar compared to the flex contribution of a Gitzo 1227 - which is one size smaller than your tripod).

BTW, if you don't have good, solid ground like rocks, putting additional weight on the tripod can help a lot; just make sure it can't swing.

-- Tilo

If your 70-200 lens is the IS version, then you would get sharper images handheld at 1/30. At least I do.

I tested it again in a garage. I saw NO vibration this time. I must have well, I don;t know. It's strange. I only saw it after the shuttter went off. Today, nothing. I mean tight as it could be.

I may have not gotten something right when I mounted the lens or maybe the tripod was on a small road rock that I didn't notice.

Anyway, thanks for all of the advice.

Who knows?

Maybe you experienced some small local earthquakes

Slightly more seriously: if you were beside a road, maybe some vehicles passed while you pressed the shutter?

I am just reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawking. This might fit in the category of inexplicable things which lead some people to think there must be a God.

LOL, yes Dawkings (sic) "Dawkins" is a good man. Instead of thinking there is a God, I thought, "I'm screwed." But on the otehr hand, if I had concluded that there was a God, I'd have said the same thing.

I don't know what it was, but I only saw it after I released the shutter. Very strange.

If you like Dawkins, you should subscribe to "Skeptic" magazine. He's a regular contributor. And Micheal Shermer is the editor, another Dawkins like personality. I've actually had personal email conversations with Shermer.
http://www.skeptic.com/
It's the quintessential debunking publication.

I remeber once they did a story on "the Amazing Randi" who tests peolpe's belif systems, mainly of the religious type. He and an assistant traveled America with "Magic crystals" and sold hundreds of them. Of course it was a scam, and the crystals were glass made by a company in an assembly line--no magical powers.

After they had a very large following, they told everyone it was a hoax, explained their techniques to get peple to buy into the system--the same techniques used by religion to convince people of "truth" without evidence--and then gave them all their money back. Surprising, they wrote to the assistant, since Randi was the one who told them it was a hoax, and told the assistant they didn't believe Randi and they thought he was a horrible person, but they knew it was really true and they "trusted" the assistant. So most of them never returned their magic crystals for a refund, even in teh face of evidence, and choose to keep believing what was told them by Randi and the assistant.

In other words, their belief system was unscathed because of their own needs and fears.

If you do a search for it you'll find the study and all the citations and what they concluded about these types of beliefs.

I think that as one gets a little older, it becomes less the norm to knock peoples´ beliefs.

This might or might not be mocked or put into the fear pìgeonhole; I don´t think it should. I´d be the first to say that all religions of which I know anything about - not that many, to be sure - owe more to man than to God. The problem lies more in the realms of science and the chicken-and-egg process. You can reduce everything backwards to the fashionable Big Bang theory but you still have to go the next step and ask what before that? And to say nothing answers nothing.

Come to think about it, the deeper into the known bits of life around us that research goes, the more complicated it all seems to be, making the random swim out of the swamp not the easy first leap it might have been, which is not an attempt to deny that the swamp might well have been home once upon a time, just that there was a lot more to it than an extra twitch of the tail onto the hard.

In the end, none of us knows what much of it is about; the Ten Cs offer us the best set of common rules for co-existence that I´ve personally met up with and if the rest of the world were to follow them, I´m sure we´d all be better off, regardless of colour, race or anything much else. So much good the world´s clerics, with their platforms, could do were they to forget ego and the power struggle for peoples´minds and hearts...

Don´t you just love photography?

Rob C

You know that people do study the time before the big bang, right?

Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer (Voltaire: my French may be a bit awry)

Jeremy

As long as before the Big Bang you mean a time "in time," then that would be possible. But when you move to an "other than time" situation, which is effectively nothing for humans, then you can go no further because time is a necessary condition of knowledge.

This is true because all "things" have duration and all duration is an element of time.

If I'm wrong, then there should be an example of some-"thing" not in time, which is a contradiction.

Don't you just love language and logic?

Some people think that testing their beliefs are equal to knocking them though, which is far from factual. If I believe that the moon is made of green cheese, and someone shows me how I may be holding a false belief, that is not knocking my belief.

Fear is far from a pigeon hole. It's a motivator that has been motivating people to create belief systems for ages, including human sacrifice and genocide. It deserves a serious investigation. But of course there are other things besides fear that motivate leading to the same erroneous conclusions. True for sure.

Knowledge has conditions. If those conditions are not met, then no knowledge (see my time post above). When we get to a point where we cannot fulfill those conditions, then we simply stop asking questions because to keep asking them would be fruitless, as far as gaining knowledge is concerned.

The realm of unanswerable questions is the realm of religion, or pure speculation. Also, the Big Bang theory is not popular because it is "fashionable" but rather because the evidence warrants that belief. The Big Bang, when stripped, simply means "When time began, that is, when a measurement was possible for humans." All science is a degree of measuring. You can't measure what is outside of time because all "things" are in time--they have duration, solid objects and concepts--they have a beginning and an end.

The chicken and the egg problem is not one of science. What happened before the big bang is something other than space and time oriented and thus outside the realm of science (It's that pesky necessary condition thing again.) The problem is actually thus a religious one, for those interested in asking such questions. It's the same question as, "What created God" ad infinitum and naseum.

Have you ever heard of the "Noble Eightfold Path?" It rivals the Ten Cs in substance. There are secular reasons for living in relative peace also. The problem with religious systems of ethics is that they don't tell us why to act in such a way, whereas secular systems do. That is, The Ten Cs (as an example) are based on command and obedience, whereas secular systems are built around reason and explanation. Yes, we give the Ten C's explanations, but originally, they came with no instructions.

I'm not "knocking" anything here, just pointing out some ideas and yes truths, logical, scientific, and religious, those being the necessary conditions of all knowledge, science and evidence, religious systems vs secular/rational and their concomitant differences.

Of course we're all free to belief whatever we want. But the question I always ask myself is this: Are my beliefs warranted, or are they not?" remembering that if I had lived 2, 000 years ago, I most likely would have believed in rain gods.

All very well put, dwallam, but still avoids answering the before-big-bang question. Saying that it is beyond human understanding doesn´t justify killing the idea that something else, beyond current human understanding perhaps, was there and could still be there, wherever or whatever ´there´ might be.

Rain dances? If it works for some...

I could well be misreading your post, but I do think that life can´t be cut down to something as simple or definitive as the ´íf it can´t be proved now, then it can´t be true´ notion of what´s possible or not. I´m happy to ride with the ´don´t know´ troupe on this one - for me, it´s at least an honest stance, not to say that your beliefs are not, just that they are different but hardly conclusive.

Rob C

People have been extrapolating the existance of god(s) everytime they have been faced with something beyond their comprehension. It started with thunder and lighting, became the origin of the species and now it has been moved back to 'before' the big-bang. It will never end. Newest justification is 'shutter release vibration'.

Nikos, don´t be so harsh: you had some of the best darn gods of all! Where would we be without Aphrodite?

Rob C

Ah! those were strange gods. Could do just as much good or evil as people can

Proving that something (like an omnipotent God who listens to human prayers) does not exist is impossible. Estimating the probability that such a thing exists is possible. I think that it is very difficult to maintain that there is a God in the face of the evidence that the probability is miniscule.

Strange how posts can drift... oh well, here's my 2cents worth:
I thinks it's a bit like photography in that if you approach it only with your intellect you are probably destined to fail. All the images I have that please me most have been taken with my whole being. There is something in them that is deeply satisfying. Uh, but this doesn't happen that often . Similarly if you are going to approach that which is Spirit you may need to do it with your own spirit. Not that you leave your intellect behind, it's just not enough for All That Is.
BTW, dwdallam, I've had some odd weird vibration problems with a carbon fibre tripod when shooting on a wooden floor. If in doubt I now hang my backpack from a hook screwed into the tripod head and also put a beanbag on top of the camera. Confoundedly inconvenient but every shot with this set up has been sharp.
Cheers, David

Dwdallam,

In my experience the IS functionality on the 70-200L IS makes a considerable difference in compensating for the sort of vibrations that you describe.

My Canon 70-200 f/4L IS manual suggests turning off IS when using a tripod but enabling IS when using a monopod or a tripod with only two legs extended. This instructions appears to assume that a tripod-mounted configuration is perfectly stable, which of course is nonsense. I have also read forum suggestions that leaving IS on with a tripod-mounted shooting configuration can cause problems.

I do not believe that the gyro-based IS system in the lens "knows" whether camera shake is a result of your trembling hands or tripod vibrations. (I am not absolutely sure of this, because a different time constant may be associated with the two causes of camera shake.) In my experience, though, as I said, IS appears to be just as effective in both cases.

In fact, the 70-200 with x1.4 converter on my 40D (x1.6 factor), mounted on my Gitzo 2540, is so unstable while focusing using live view at x10 magnification that I can hardly focus the jumping image unless I press the shutter release half-way to engage IS. Then the image settles down to a remarkable degree. (Actually, the image settles "up.") If you are using a non-IS 70-200, I would trade it for an IS version as soon as possible. The difference in image stability for long-lens landscape work is well worth the price difference.

Another question is your method of shutter release. I no longer bother with the remote shutter release. I use the two-second timer instead, and find that the two seconds is more than enough time for the vibrations caused by manually pressing the shutter to dampen. (Obviously, manually pressing the shutter release without the timer will not fly at these focal lengths.)

Bruce, I used the same technique on my F4s when I had it, but the trouble then was that Sod´s Law managed to bring on the breezes just after the release was pressed, more often than not. I found, in the end, that the electronic cable release used with m/u was the best way with non-people subjects: your eyes will tell you when the world has settled down long enough to expose and on the basis that the shutter is going to jerk regardless of what you do before you tigger it, you just have to live with that slight degree of movement and you have at least factored out the mirror input. Unless you have a Pentax 67 ll, in which case you can never win because the shutter is as bad as the mirror. My experience, sadly and expensively.

Rob C

Yes, we do tend to fly in and out of photographic focus now and then, and that is what makes this site so interesting for me. Also, it is quite revealing of some of us posters and helps to create or encourage a closer sort of bond. I´m all for it.

There is no argument with what you say about dealing with the spiritual with the spirit. There is no other way forward towards an understanding of it and that is not to deny others the right to deny what they simply refuse to accept. I can´t see electricty, nor have I any idea of the colour of gravity, but I do see their effects in a manner similar to the way in which I see and feel the effects of beauty, goodness and evil. If I am able to accept the existance of one abstract why should I deny the possibility of another, just because it might seem a little off the main drag? What is known today would have been denied or mocked as witchcraft or just deemed impossible but some few generations ago - mobile ´phones, for example? Beam me up, Scotty!

So, on the level of the metaphysical, who can be so sure about anything?

Rob C

That is a good point, Rob. I have experienced that problem using the 2-second timer. The tree leaves were not moving when I pressed the shutter release to take my three-shot bracketed sequence... So, it appeas to boil down to convenience vs. overcoming Sod's law. I find it such a pain to plug in the electronic release through the RRS bracket each time I set up the tripod...