Timelapse Tripod – How to choose the best one?

Tripod is an essential accessory if you are planning to get into timelapse photography. It is suggested to buy timelapse camera tripod to achieve great quality results from your timelapse photography. If you are confused about which tripod to buy? Don’t worry this article will help you finding the best one which suits your budget.

Before we get into the discussion on best time lapse tripod, lets understand what is timelapse photography.

According to Wikipedia, “Time-lapse photography is a technique whereby the frequency at which film frames are captured (the frame rate) is much lower than that used to view the sequence. When played at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing. For example, an image of a scene may be captured once every second, then played back at 30 frames per second; the result is an apparent 30 times speed increase. In a similar manner, film can also be played at a much lower rate than it was captured at, slowing down fast action, as slow motion or high-speed photography.

Take a look at this video to watch how timelapse video looks like:

Shooting timelapse video is not an easy task, you need to master end to end settings of your DSLR mainly your ISO, Shutter speed and aperture settings.  Not just the settings, you would require some advanced accessories like shutter release, prime lenses, filters, sliders, high speed SD cards and sturdy tripod along with your DSLR camera!

timelapse-gear
Picture courtesy: Digital Photography School

In this article, I would give you some tips on choosing the best tripod for your timelapse videos. I will try to explain about other accessories in my upcoming articles.

Choosing the best Tripod for Timelapse Videos:

If you are buying a tripod for timelapse videos ensure you check these things.

1. Load Capacity: Check if the tripod you buy has good weight load capacity. It is because, you may have to use some high weight camera and lenses for your timelapse shoots. Your tripod should have enough load capacity to hold your camera well.

2. Usability: Check whether the tripod you buy is user friendly. It shouldn’t have unnecessary features which leads to lot of confusions. Buy the one which is very simple to operate.

3. Head Type:  There are majorly two types of heads. The first type is a pan tilt head which operates on two separate axis. One axis allows you to move the camera up and down while the other axis moves side to side. Each axis can be shifted independently without moving the other.

The other type is a ball head. The ball head is known for its ability to be quickly adjusted and locked into place.

You can choose the tripod whichever suits your requirements.

4. Weight and Sturdiness: Tripod itself should have decent weight to stay sturdy while shooting. Most of the times in timelapse photography, camera will be on auto capture mode, hence while taking pictures tripod should not create any shaky effect.

5. Price: There are tripods which are available for less than 50 dollars. And there are some tripods which are available to buy for more than 2500 dollars. So decide your budget first and then start searching for the right tripods.

 

6. Height: Try getting the tripod which has decent height capacity too. Because you may have to extend the height to cover some of the areas as part of your timelapse photography. therefore buy a Tripod which has very good height capacity.

7. Strong Legs: Make sure Tripod has strong legs. Else there is high chance that the tripod may fall and it could create bigger damage to your dslr and lenses. While buying, just check if tripod has strong legs with solid grip.

To explore Tripods from Flipkart visit the

best tripods in india

Hope you found this useful!

Happy clicking!!

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