In this last article in the series of articles about tripods I am giving some more guidelines on how to make your tripod choice.

Another (very important!) question that you need to ask yourself:

How much are you willing to spend?

Tripod prices range from as little as €40, all the way to €500, even more! The same goes with their quality: "you get what you have paid for" unfortunately comes true here.

I don’t recommend getting the cheapest tripod there is, because it will most likely not be strong enough, not steady enough and be purely built. It is definitely tempting to do that, especially with your first tripod!

However, soon you will be disappointed, your needs will expend and you will find yourself buying another tripod. In the end, you will spend much more money than you would if you bought a tripod that would fulfil your needs from the beginning.

Additionally, you need to consider that most tripod (at least the better ones) are usually sold without tripod heads. Therefore when calculating the cost of a tripod, consider you need to buy a tripod head as well! (Most manufacturers do however offer the possibility to buy a kit, which includes a tripod as well as a tripod head.)

Having said all that, I do need to point out that how much you should spend SHOULD hugely depend on how much and how important photography is to you and what kind of features you need. There is absolutely no need to buy a very expensive tripod (when much cheaper tripod would do the job good enough) and then let it lie around somewhere in the closet. Yes, buying a tripod does need some thinking and compromising.

Search for tripods and test them

Now that you know what features are important for you (it is also good idea to write them down and prioritize them) and how much you are willing to spend, it is time to look for actual tripod models with such characteristics. To make your choice easier, I will prepare the comparison Excel sheet with some of the models.

When you make a short list of the models you want, test them! Why is this important? You will be able to feel for yourself how certain features (e.g. locks, height, weight, adjusting…) feel. Different people like different things and many things about tripods are completely subjective, therefore try it out! You need to like it otherwise you will not use it!

Things that are the most important to consider and the most quickly to start to irritate you when they don’t fulfil your needs

1. Tripod should be sturdy. That is reason why you have agreed to be carrying it around in the first place! Only with a sturdy tripod you can get sharp images.
2. It should be quick to adjust: you don’t want to miss the right moment or spend too much time adjusting it.
3. It should allow you to be flexible: taking photos from different angles and positions.
4. It should be light and fit on the backpack (if travelling around and hiking).
5. Your camera system becomes too heavy for the tripod to carry. Make sure that you determine the weight of all the cameras, lenses, flashes or anything that you would want to put on a tripod. The tripod specification that you should be looking at here is the maximum load capacity.
6. Bad grip when shooting in the nature – helps if tripod feet can be removable.

And remember, tripod should last a lifetime!

If you are just a bit serious about photography, get yourself a "good enough" tripod from the beginning.

Conclusion

Buying a tripod is always a compromise. You just cannot have it all. That’s why it is important to think what features you want and how you want the tripod to behave before making the choice and final decision.

I hope you have found this series of articles useful to help you make that choice. I have written them in an attempt to simply describe all the tripod features that you might come across in your search for your perfect tripod, as well as pointed out some important questions that you should ask yourself during this process. I really hope it helped!

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