Tripod for D800

<p>I have the opportunity to buy the following tripod from my friend for just $30, and $45 including the head: Manfrotto 294A3. It seems like a good deal, but I am curious if it will hold my equipment. I have the following:</p>

<p>Nikon D800 with grip and battery/sd/cf card - 1375g<br>

Nikon 70-200VRII - 1540g<br>

Tripod head Manfrotto 496RC2 (the one that comes with the tripod) - 450g</p>

<p>The total weight is: 3.37kg</p>

<p>My flash unit is off camera so no added weight there, so I don’t think I am missing something.</p>

<p>The tripod is rated that it can carry 5KG, so with a total weight of 3.37KG I shouldn’t be worried right? I don’t use a tripod often, so I don’t want to spend a lot of money on it. Just for some studio work, or maybe once in a while outside. I will not use it in extreme conditions, but I do want to make sure that the whole thing doesn’t collapse and I’m left with a broken camera and lens.</p>

<p>Do you really want to trust $5,000 worth of gear to sit on top of a $75 dollar tripod setup?</p>

<p>While I'm sure it will hold the camera up fine if you are careful about things, the tripod head and quick release looks pretty flimsy from the pictures of it. I would recommend getting something a bit more sturdy. </p>

<p>Though some will insist on girder-like legs and Arca-style heads suitable for an RPG, take a look at the Manfrotto 055 legs and heavier heads like the old 488 or newer 498. Key, though, is ditching the RC2 plate for the RC4. Slippage/twisting usually occurs at the contact patch between camera and QR plate--not the ball head. The bigger RC4 plate and adapter should still be available separately to replace an RC2 plate. Huge amounts of used Manfrotto gear available.</p>

<p>Gary -<br /> I'd ignore worries that cheap tripods are likely to be unsafe based on cost, at least when they're products from major manufacturers. The potential for destroyed camera lawsuits would be huge and I doubt any of the majors would take the risk. And if their tripods were dropping cameras inside their claimed weight limit, Internet forums would be full of screaming - check for this with a search if you like.<br /> <br />BUT the tripod is probably still too light. Tripod makers quote weight honestly but in the most favourable possible way - with the stated mass concentrated over the centre of the head. A camera with a long heavy lens exerts a lot more torque, so as a rule you use something like a quarter of the tripod's stated capacity as a real world figure for shake free shots. Being more optimistic than this will tend to get accutance reducing micro-blurring, which rather defeats the point of your set-up.<br>

<br /> Ming Thein is normally sound on hardware: he suggests dividing the rated figure for a tripod by TEN: http://blog.mingthein.com/2015/01/11/picking-a-tripod/<br>

..I suppose you could argue that you can be more optimistic if you only use the tripod for flash shots - at least if the flash to continuous ratio is *very* high.</p>