A Taller Tripod

[Anna M. Wood]

My husband helped me tonight to make some extra long legs for my tripod.  Hope to test it out soon.

1" dia steel electrical conduit with 1/4-20 bolts up 60" from the floor for the tripod legs to sit on. Total length 78", just covers the 2nd twist lock on the tripod leg.  Bungies to keep the legs from falling off when moving.

I am going to replace the bolts with eye bolts so I can string the legs together to keep them from spreading to far.  You can generate a lot of torque on the leg joint with the extenders.

[Jay Beckman]

Clever solution Anna, but I'd suggest you forgo extending the center column as that's usually the source of the most wiggle with any tripod.

You might consider making your "spreader" out of something substantial to help with torsional rigidity as well.  The twisting moment can be substantial with legs that long.

Nifty idea though! 

[Anna M. Wood]

Excellent thoughts Jay.....  Definitely those are areas of weakness with a super tall set of legs.

Len and I have some ideas in mind for future improvements.   The moment arms are long when the legs are that tall.  A center spreader device is likely to get added.  I need to design that up in SolidWorks first.

At the moment I do not plan on mounting anything huge on it.  For sure it is not for windy days either.

The height is set so I can still comfortably reach the camera with the center post retracted from my ladder.  9 feet to the arca plate with center post retracted.

High enough to peek over the fence at Williams at night.  Their only mission until I can save up enough for some super tall carbon legs.