Tripod...dont shout!

Robbo

Robbo

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Right, basically I was reading a post about tripods etc....prices and kinds blah blah blah.....

....for the life of my i cant understand why to pay up to £500 for various makes.

surely working on cost materials for the item, which isnt much material to them really, not complicated scientific brake through system in them, .... they are all very simple.....

...so.... how can these prices be justified?

obviously they are excellent build quality etc and better than 'cheaper' quality ones for weighted camera and larger lenses etc......i just cant help feel there is at least a £350 profit on them for that price.

can some one please explain if im missing something?:bonk:

thank you :)
 
Most of the high end one are carbon fibre - provide extreme platforms for serious amounts of kit - all in a lightweight package for the more adventurous toggers.
I guess it comes down to what the value of the special features are to each individual. I am in the middle - I have a manfrotto witha decent head - I want the proper steadfast stability and therefore don't mind paying for it compared to a rickity one from tescos.
And for proffessionals you cannot put a price on the difference between an average shot and a tack sharp one :)
 
I doubt that you're missing anything Robbo.
Unfortunately if you want a top class tripod it'll cost you big style. You can get cheap tripods but they do tend to be poorly build and not that stable. The ones that are stable tend to be quite expensive. That doesn't make it right of course, but it is a fact of life.
 
i can see why now it can be good for the top pros with alot of gear etc etc.... but i still think they will be making £300 plus on a £500 stand......

....dont get me wrong if i had the money :-D lol

ive only just started out myself and never guessed you could pay that much! lol
 
If you want a really good tripod, bypass the obvious current fashion stuff and look for a used alloy tripod. Everyone is wanting carbon fibre etc., but it just means that there are a lot of truly excellent tripods available secondhand that just don't meet that criteria.
Yes it will be heavier, so what? unless you're hiking with it that doesn't make a lot of difference in reality. If you're using it in either a studio or on location where you're not going more than a few hundred yards from the car does it matter that it weighs a bit more? £100 or just over should get you something with a good name and more importantly rock solid.

cheers
Bill
 
The cost is usually justified by one thing

Demand - a product is worth precisely what people will pay for it

If someone will pay £500 for a tripod then it is clearly worth that much to them. If you don't want to spend £500 on a tripod then there are other companies that will supply you with a product that is worth whatever you do want to spend.

A couple of months ago I spent over £35 on a metal plate to fasten my camera to my tripod head. It is a simple plate with a dovetail on the bottom and a slight curve to match my camera base. Cost of materials was probably under £1 but having a plate that fit my camera perfectly was worth that much to me.
 
think £500 is a lot for a tripod, never get into video... pro studio pedestals... madness.

with a good tripod... you can tell why it cost a lot to build. it's not really so easily quantifiable as just... you can tell :P doubtless yes there's some decent profit margin, but expensive tripods are also a fairly low volume item so attract the costs that go with that.
 
I think there's a lot of truth in the OP's post. Manfrotto and Gitzo pretty much dominate the market and they're effectively the same company. I think they're taking the Mick TBH.

If you strip away the cost of European labour and full-on marketing, plus distribution and retail margins, you get a Benro. Made in China, direct copy of a Gitzo, extremely high quality and half the price http://www.photopal.co.uk/ Even cheaper on Ebay via the US.

They have a vast range (much larger than on the link) including other heads (copies of Arca Swiss) and also copies of Wimberley gimbal heads that everybody says are indistinguishable from the US originals that cost £500 (that's just for the head :eek: ).

Edit: link to the full Benro range on Ebay http://stores.ebay.com/DCs-Photography-Store
 
Thanks for all the different view points :-)

Some nice tips to for when I come to upgrade all my kit.
 
It is like everything in life, take cars, why buy a Merc when a Ford does the same thing? Why buy a Brietling watch for several thousand pounds when you can get a citizen or similar for £100 or less, it is partly the enjoyment that owning items brings aswell. Plus if you are a pro or take your hobby very seriously then you want the best euipment you can buy/afford.
 
Robbo said:
....for the life of my i cant understand why to pay up to £500 for various makes.
Click to expand...

Cheap ... Lightweight ... Rigid Pick any two :thumbs:

Back in 1975 I bought a cheap tripod, it was awful, took an age to set up, was unstable, and to top it off, heavy. It did not get used, then upon a visit to my local retailer I happened upon a Gitzo Reporter, £80 including the head, I enquired if it was made of gold, no aluminium was the response.

I tried it, it was a thing of beauty, it worked simply, it was lightweight and stable, so I bought it.

Two years ago I gave that tripod to a friend (I had upgraded to carbon), it was still working perfectly over 30 years on.

My camera and lens weigh just over 4kg, it needs to be stable, it needs to do it's job and get out of the way, it does that, I am happy.

Here is an interesting read on the subject by Thom Hogan Tripod 101

The other option is buy a Chinese copy, they are cheaper, they should be they have no R&D cost other than buying one of the competitions products, reverse engineering it and manufacturing it with cheap labour.

At the end of the day it is your money, and your choice how you spend it, as it is mine, I chose a product that had proved it's reliability to me in the past, I am more than happy with my choice.
 
Why would I want to put 4k worth of kit on a cheap £100 tripod, I know when my D3 is locked into my Gitzo tripod I can walk away or leave it and its not going anywhere. Its also been in snow, salt water, mud, rivers and still works great. To me its well worth the money.
 
If there's one thing I learn over the years with tripods, is that you get what you paid for. Gitzo is a buy-once product. I've not tried all the makes, but I have bought a few over the years and nothing so far comes close when it comes to built & stability. And yes I hike with big lens so the weight saving is not an option but a requirement.
 
I think you must remember that you are not alone in the world, with medium and large format , 5x4 & 10x8 inch cameras you need a tripod of high quality a Gitzo will cost around 600 if not more but it will also rise to 5 meters, so I think really it's horses for courses you need lightweight you pay for carbon fibre you need great strength you pay for strength etc.
Also don't forget the video and film market? :)
 
Bill Roberts said:
If you want a really good tripod, bypass the obvious current fashion stuff and look for a used alloy tripod. Everyone is wanting carbon fibre etc., but it just means that there are a lot of truly excellent tripods available secondhand that just don't meet that criteria.
Yes it will be heavier, so what? unless you're hiking with it that doesn't make a lot of difference in reality. If you're using it in either a studio or on location where you're not going more than a few hundred yards from the car does it matter that it weighs a bit more? £100 or just over should get you something with a good name and more importantly rock solid.

cheers
Bill
Click to expand...

Sorry, but I would beg to differ. I have 2 tripods, one a big weighty manfrotto alloy unit that only gets used either in the house/studio or near the car and a CF one that I used today. The CF is VERY lightweigh but incredibly stable [therefore going some considerable way to justifying the 3 figure price tag, as I still have an old £25 jobbie that is equally lightweight and not stable at all] - I have walked round ALL day with it today, on the flat, no hills, but still ache like b**ch this evening - BUT I wouldn't have made it to elevenses with the heavy weight one. You don't have to be hiking with a tripod to need something that is stable and lightweight.

Basically you have to consider what you can afford, what you need it for and what it will be doing. Yes, some are very very expensive...there is a Gitzo that costs something in the region of £800, way beyond anything I could afford, but... having played briefly with this mamouth price tag, it folds down so small, you can strap it under a normal sized back pack and it WON'T stick out any wider that the bag, I could pick it up easily quite literally with one finger but is engineered in such a way that it really would take wild horses to pul it over.... you pays your money and you takes your choice. Extreme examples like this are probably only for the well earning pro's, but buy cheap, buy twice [or more]. Can they justify the price tags? Well, they are selling......
 
Saturday night I was involved with the organising of a local fireworks display. Because of the parking issues, long queues to get in/out I usually walk to it. It's about a 30min walk each way, which means that with my collapsible seat, camerabag and tripod I appreciated the lightweight of my CF Redsnapper tripod. Anything heavier and I'd have left the whole camera kit at home.
 
The first thing you lean about pricing in business is:-
The Price of anything is not based on it cost plus profit BUT what the market will stand.
So if people will pay the price then that’s what it will be WHEN the public stop paying it the price will fall
 
Most people buy at least three tripods in their life, often more.

First they buy a Jessops/Tesco/Dixons cheapo job for £20 - £30. "It's stupid to spend more than that" is their reasoning. After a few months of wiggles, jiggles and drooping lenses they decide they need something a bit more sturdy.

So they buy a cheap, all-metal, monster with a cheap head. At last they've got something stable. Except that they still suffer from droopy lenses and no amount of Viagra can fix it.

Finally they cough up the dosh for a light, sturdy, carbon-fibre tripod with a decent head - and try to flog their earlier mistakes.
 
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