affen_kot Posted May 2, 2004 Share Posted May 2, 2004 greets everyone. today, while browsing through the isles of eBay, i happened upon an austrian military tripod for sale at (what seemed to be) an extremely reasonable price for a new item that was purported to hold 40 kilos of weight and (bonus) also sported lots of aggressively angled, pointy extensions and muscular looking adjustment dials. very 'armed forces.' even the legs appear in essence to be made of three steel spears that can be detached and used to supply a photographic expeditionary team with meat. knowing that photo-groupies flock to guys with dangerous looking olive drab military tripods, i immediately bought it without really giving much thought to how on earth this weapon of cartographic warfare would actually mount to a supercambo 4x5. The seller told me that the tripod was meant originally for use with an "entfernungsmesser" (which means "rangefinder," so i'm going to take a guess that this was designed to mate with some military surveying tool other than a camera), but he also said that this could - not sure if he meant 'theorhetically' - be used in conjunction with a 4x5 view camera. Try as i might, I didn't see any standard mating screw in the pictures (but did i mention that it has a lot of aggressively angled, pointy extensions?), which leads me towards the assumption that i will have to purchase an additional head adaptor or something of the like. so my questions would be: when looking at the low-res picture below, can anyone offer suggestions as to how this thing might be made to mate with a monorail camera? does anyone actually have experience with this sort of tripod head, and if so, what did you do (if anything) to make this work with your camera? any military surveyers on photo.net who could toss in some ideas? i appreciate any thoughts that you could offer. and even if there isn't a way to mate this jobber with a 4x5, it's nice to know that at least it could double as a car jack. thanks in advance. -adam Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Troll Posted May 2, 2004 Share Posted May 2, 2004 Duct Tape. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nick_morris Posted May 2, 2004 Share Posted May 2, 2004 Adam, that's an interesting piece of equipment. If the manufacturer is identified, you might try to contact the company, and ask them for suggestions. They might have an adapter already made for your use. A machine shop or metal fabricator should be able to make something for you. It looks as if some type of plate will need to be made. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
affen_kot Posted May 2, 2004 Author Share Posted May 2, 2004 duct tape is the great equalizer (ask most fiat mechanics). hadn't thought of the machine shop option, and coincidentally i do have a friend who owns a metal shop. as for the original manufacturer, i found a promising lead in the internet... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
per_volquartz1 Posted May 2, 2004 Share Posted May 2, 2004 Get yourself a 6" carbon tipped drill bit. Spread the "tripod legs. Find the center spot between the legs and drill upwards, through the whole mess. Where the bit emerges on top build a platform. Insert a long 1/4" or 3/8" inch bolt through the newly drilled hole and you have yourself a slick combination of tripod / rangefinder! You'll be the envy of every large format photgrapher around! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silent1 Posted May 2, 2004 Share Posted May 2, 2004 Okay, a little more seriously, here -- it looks as if you could dismount all the fancy adjustable gizmos and get a standard platform like a surveyor's tripod (without the leveling platform) underneath; you should then be able to mount a standard head (with a little work -- change out bolt for correct size/thread, etc.) and still have all the gizmo part for experimentation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelly_flanigan1 Posted May 2, 2004 Share Posted May 2, 2004 Your military device on top of the light duty tripod appears to be a aiming circle; ie a site. These are used for triangulation ie fire-control of batteries; ie cannon; mortars; guns. Usually these read horizontal angles quickly; have a compass; and small 4x telescope. Many read in mils; 4000 mils is 360 degrees. 1 mil is about 1 ft arc in 1000ft; thus quick gunners can lay fire quickly; do offsets while being shot at. The aiming circle M1 was used prior to WW2; the Germans used a similar model; which I have. The German aiming circle reads in degrees; then to 5 minutes; has illumination for night usage. The photo you linked looks sort of like a more modern version of a Vietnam era aiming circle I have too; same vial and knobs.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelly_flanigan1 Posted May 2, 2004 Share Posted May 2, 2004 All the military deals I have seen have tripods that are not permanently corrected to these gizmos. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thirteenthumbs Posted May 2, 2004 Share Posted May 2, 2004 JB Weld; Quick setting JB Weld, 5 minute epoxy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aoresteen Posted May 2, 2004 Share Posted May 2, 2004 Send it SK Grimes. They will figure it out for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt_parker3 Posted May 3, 2004 Share Posted May 3, 2004 Kelly, a mil is a milliradian. There are about 6280 of them in a circle. I quote here from http://www.gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/units/sea.htm "Another angle unit is the mil. This is a military unit for defining angles. The name derives from milliradian, and they are used because an angle of X mils is X metres wide at a distance of X kilometres. This means that if you drop a shell 200 metres to one side of the target (according to your map) and it's 4 km away, 200 divided by 4 is 50, so you swing your aim by 50 mils. Note that current OS maps have the magnetic and grid deviations shown in mils as well as degrees. There are 6283.1853 mils in a circle, but they seem to be rounded off to various values in use, such as 6283 and 6280. However, the US military made things 'simpler' by standardizing on 6400 mils in a circle. To make things even more interesting, the Russians, and perhaps others in Europe, use 6000 mils in a circle!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
affen_kot Posted May 4, 2004 Author Share Posted May 4, 2004 thanks for all the thoughts. kelly's post in particular was very enlightening. seems like i might just use the legs for the time being, but i'll keep the head handy in case austria gets overrun again. much obliged...adam Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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