Specification: leg bracing / cross-bracing

Tripod can either have leg braces or not.

There are two types of leg bracings:

• The ones, where the bracing is attached to the tripod legs and the bottom of the center column.
• The ones, where the bracing is attached to the tripod legs and to the ring around the center column, with a brace lock, allowing legs to be locked at the chosen even spread. Note that this does not allow legs to be positioned at any angle individually, but influences all legs together.

More often than not, this applies:

• They are found on cheaper tripods to prevent tripod from spreading its legs wide open. Therefore, more often than not, bracing is a synonym for “cheaper” and “of lower quality”.
• Usually they do improve stability, although not that notably on cheaper lightweight tripods.
• Better tripods, especially professional models don’t have them (and don’t need them).
• Studio tripods, however, usually do have bracing. Because such tripods are usually higher and require bigger load capacity, bracing provide them that.
• Stability of the tripod should not be judged on whether it has bracing or not, but rather on its design and construction materials.
• The most obvious limitation is how far out tripod can spread its legs. This is especially important when doing macro photography when you want to get as close to the ground as possible by spreading tripod legs wide open (“all the way”).
• Another limitation, which can be especially annoying on uneven terrain is that you cannot adjust angle of the legs individually.
• Because of the limitations listed above, tripos with bracing are best to use in a studio, at home or whenever you have even ground. If you want to use tripods in nature, it is best to look for ones with individually adjustable leg angles.

Specification: Leg spread / leg angle

Can tripod legs move independently?

That is, can the angle of each tripod legs be changed individually and independently to one another?

This is a very helpful and necessary feature for anyone shoting outdoors where the ground is rarely completely even. And not all tripods have it!

Individually adjustable leg angles allow you to:

• get closer to the ground by spreading the legs to 90-degree angle (for low-level and macro photography);
• setup tripod quicker and more secure on uneven terrain or indoors (i.e. stairs);
• setup tripod when you don’t have much space available.

On uneven terrain:

This is obviously not possible if tripod legs have braces.

There are generally two types of systems:

Ratchet or stop system

Ratchet or stop system allows you to position tripod legs under (usually) three steps – angles.

On different models there are various ways to change the leg angle, most often you press&hold the button or pull up the lock release.

At which angles these stops are, depends on the manufacturer.

Naturally, the bigger the angle, the lower the tripod gets. You can lock all the legs at the same angle, or set each leg’s angle independently according to the (uneven) terrain.

Any-angle system

This system allows you to lock the legs independently at any desired angle from 0- to 90-degrees. Great flexibility!

Again, on different models there are different ways to do it, usually there is a button to press or there is a clamp lock.

For the quickest operation, first position the legs at the desired angles and then lock the legs.

Make sure the tripod has a good center of gravity

When you are shooting on even ground, the centre of tripod’s gravity is usually not a problem (unless if using a really long lens or a horizontal center column).

However, when you are shooting on uneven terrain, when you need to position tripod legs individually, you have to pay attention of the tripod’s center of gravity as well when positioning the legs – otherwise you run the risk of tripod falling over!

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