Inexpensive Carbon Fiber Tripods; Do They Get The Job Done?

Identical setups, same camera, same lens, same shutter speed, same apertures, sane ISO, just two different tripods used on a windy day.  Which result do you want? (click to enlarge)

A few months ago, I saw an inexpensive carbon fiber tripod available in one of Amazon's Lightning Deals. It was portrayed as a "lightweight tripod" which, to me, it meant it was small, constructed of carbon fiber and the legs folded 180 degrees up over the tripod head. I would also classify it as a "travel tripod."  It came with a ball head, case and the feature that allows one to remove one of the legs to use as a monopod. The price seemed too low for a good carbon fiber tripod. I paid $130.85 US but now sells for about $139/$144 US, depending upon which vendor you choose. I was hesitant to purchase it as I had never heard of the brand nor did I really know how sturdy the tripod or ball head would be. How good could a carbon fiber tripod in this price range really be? In the end, I did purchase it more out of curiosity than need. I've now used it a few times and done some testing for stability.  Here is a quick assessment of my findings, not a full review.

Here is Amazon's official description of what I purchased:

"Mactrem Q666C tripod, 64.5” Lightweight Portable Carbon Fiber Camera Tripod, Detachable Monopod, 360 Degree Ball Head, Quick Release Plate & Carry Case for Digital Video DSLR Cameras – 33lbs Max Load"

Here is one of Amazon's illustrations of the tripod:

Image courtesy of Amazon.com

The Mactrem seemed to be well constructed, looked very good and the ball head seemed pretty sturdy.  For a small tripod, it seemed to be of good quality.  But, again, it is a small tripod.  How sturdy would it be under adverse conditions?

On a day that had no wind, I found the tripod stable with my Olympus E-M1 Mark II and 12-100mm f/4 lens securely attached with an L-bracket.  The images were sharp.  That, in my mind, didn't tell me much as almost all tripods are stable on days with no wind.  The only issue normally found on calm days is putting a camera and lens which is too heavy for the ball head.  The ball head can't handle the weight and will slowly tilt forward.  Not an issue with this camera and lens combination.

I then set up a quick stability test on a day that had some wind.  I thought a windy day would give me a better idea of real world conditions.  As I said, almost any tripod can be stable on a very calm day, but how stable would this tripod be on a windy day?  I would estimate the wind to be a bit less than 10 mph (16 kph) with short wind gusts to maybe 15 mph (24 kph). The day certainly was not out of the ordinary for most parts of the world.  I would call it light winds at most.  A day any of us would find when out photographing.

I decided again to use my Olympus E-M1 Mark II with the 12-100mm f/4 lens at 100mm.  I would place the camera and lens so the prevailing wind would hit it at a 90 degree angle or perpendicular to the lens barrel.  At 100mm, the lens barrel would be fully extended which would give the wind more surface area to impact.  Using 100mm focal length would be typical in landscape or general photography.  In other words, as you would do in the field.  Nothing unusual.  

Testing this tripod alone wouldn't give me as much information as I wanted so I decided to conduct the same test with my large, very sturdy Induro CT-414 carbon fiber tripod with the Really Right Stuff B-55 ball head attached.  Of course, the price difference is hundreds and hundreds of dollars US.  I could then compare the performance of both under identical conditions.  Induro rates this tripod as having a 55 pound weight limit while the Mactrem is rated for 33 pounds.  Personally, I think Mactrem is very optimistic in its claims.  I don't doubt the Induro with the B55 could handle their stated weight capacities.

In order to conduct the stability test for these tripods, I placed a very high quality 6X neutral density filter over the lens so each test exposure would be multi-seconds in length.  I set the ISO to 200, aperture priority, f/11 (which I had previously tested as the smallest aperture I would use before serious diffraction softening kicked in), and turned the image stabilization off. I set the camera for a 2 second shutter delay, set the autofocus to AF-S with and placed the center focus point directly on the bark of the large oak tree (36" diameter trunk) about 20 ft. away.  I thought the oak tree was a good target as it would not move in the wind, thus eliminating subject movement.  I planned to make several exposures with each tripod to look for consistency.  The exposures were in the 2-3 second range.  All in all, I thought it should be a good test for stability.

Additionally, I wanted to test one more aspect of stability.  I tested the tripods on a hard surface, like concrete, as well as a softer surface, a grassy area in my yard (garden).

Since I don't normally extend the center column of my tripods unless I absolutely have to, I would conduct the test with the center columns in their seated positions.  The legs on the Mactrem were fully extended while the legs on the Induro were not quite fully extended only because the full height of the Induro would be above my head.  Did I mention this was a huge sturdy tripod!  Normally, I try to set up my tripods so my camera's viewfinder is at the height of my eyes.  The Mactrem was smaller and didn't extend that high while the Induro could extend above my head.  With using the Induro, I do extend the two largest leg sections out fully but only extend the bottom-most leg section (thinnest legs) partially so the height of the viewfinder is at my eye level.  That, then, maximizes stability by keeping the leg portions with the smallest diameter the least extended.

The idea was to stress the smaller tripod to the point of not necessarily extremes, but a realistic condition one may encounter in the field or when traveling and having to use the tripod under a variety of conditions.  Will it hold this camera and lens steady with a multi-second exposure in a light wind?

Here is what I found.

This is typical of the unsharpness found using the Mactrem tripod on a day with light wind. (click to enlarge)

With the Mactrem I found that only 3 of the 5 frames made on the hard surface were sharp when looking at the files at 100%.  On the softer surface, my yard, only 2 out of 6 frames were sharp.  That doesn't give me a lot of confidence for using this setup on a windy day.  But, it is small, lightweight and not very expensive.  You get what you pay for.

This is how all of the images should look.  If you enlarge these two you will easily see this image is sharp
but the image above lacks the same sharpness. (click to enlarge)

With the Induro, I found that on the hard surface, 5 out of 5 frames were sharp and 4 out of 5 frames were sharp on the softer surface.  That surprised me as I thought all would be tack sharp.  Even with a large tripod, it seems it would be worthwhile to check your images on your LCD for sharpness instead of assuming all are sharp.

In one of my previous blog posts, I mentioned that I was doing a tripod test and was asked by a commenter if I was going to also test with some sort of weight attached to the bottom of the center post.  I wasn't going to but I decided I wanted to test not only these two tripods under more adverse conditions but also my Gitzo Carbon Fiber GT2540 8X tripod with its Markins ballhead.  The Gitzo is the tripod I have used most often for probably 20 or so years. 

I waited for a blustery day and drove over to the entrance to the Hampton Roads harbor between the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel here in Southeastern Virginia.  I was on the grounds of the now decommissioned Ft. Monroe where it is always windy.  On this day, I would estimate the wind at a steady 20-25 mph with higher gusts.  Same camera, same lens, same set up, same test, only adding the Gitzo to the mix.  In this test, however, where I could set up my tripod was on a concrete sidewalk or beach sand.  I opted not to use the beach sand as I felt that no tripod would be absolutely stable on such a windy day.  Again, the wind would be 90 degrees to the lens barrel to maximize the buffering.

Without going into a great deal of detail, I tested each tripod at focal lengths of 35mm and 100mm.  All tests with all three tripods resulted in image failures—all images were blurry. That being said, I conducted the same tests but with the in-body-image-stabilization (IBIS) turned on and their was a remarkable difference.  the majority of lhe test images were sharp. See examples below.

Representative of what results I had with all three tripods with IBIS turned off (100% crop).  There is just no weight
to this camera and lens to assist in its stability when mounted on a tripod in very windy weather.  After
conducting these tests, I've concluded that gear weight matters tremendously on windy days.  When we hear
of the benefits of smaller, lighter cameras, we don't consider the downside of gear being too lightweight.

Another frame but with IBIS turned on in the Olympus E-M1 Mark II.  Turning on the IBIS compensated for the
buffering of the wind on the lightweight gear.  This surprised me.

I found this interesting and came to three conclusions.  First, the camera and lens are now an important issue, in my judgment.  They have little weight to contribute to stability.  Heavier cameras and lenses are an advantage in this regard.  Second, one can successfully use IBIS when this camera and lens combination are mounted on a tripod.  Third, in conditions such as this, you probably are better off handholding your camera with IBIS turned on than to mount them on a tripod, unless the shutter speed is slower than 1/8" or so.  I think you would have better luck handholding the camera and bracing rather than put a micro 4/3 camera and lens on even a sturdy tripod.  This is just speculation as I didn't think to test this hypothesis at the time.  I will in the future.

One more test.  I moved from the waterfront to a place on the grounds with a bit less wind.  See the image at the top of this post.  I set up all three tripods in the same manner as before and used the same 6X ND filter.  Shutter speeds averaged about 1.3 seconds.  The wind, at this location, was probably 10-15 mph.  A bit gusty as well.  I made several images with the camera and lens mounted on each tripod.

Without going into specifics, I largely found the same result.  The Mactrem was the least stable, with or without IBIS.  Not many of the images were sharp in this test.  The Gitzo was much better, but had a few images that were not sharp even with IBIS.  The Induro was the best of the three, which I would expect.  Without IBIS there were a few images that were not sharp, but with IBIS at 100mm, only one was not sharp.

The test I conducted with a weight (about 10 lbs. or 5.4 kg) was done with the Gitzo since by that time I had pretty much given up on the Mactrem on a day such as that.  In that test, there was a difference.  Image sharpness improved.  I would expect that as well.

In sum, I wasn't surprised the smaller, much less expensive tripod with thin legs was not nearly as sturdy as the larger, more robust larger tripods.  That only makes sense under taxing conditions.  You get what you pay for.  Pay for a large tripod and you get much more stability but the price you pay is not only more money but a lot more weight, size and bulk.  Additionally, a lightweight tripod combined with a lightweight camera and lens setup doesn't seem conducive to stability on windy days.  I was hoping for a bit more stability, however.  In these tests, I believe the Mactrem tripod would be more stable and more useful if it was set up and the extension its legs minimized.  I think that is the only way I would use it and would feel more confident in the results doing so.  Again, it seems to be well constructed but its lightweight acts against it.  Also, I would only use it as my primary tripod if weight and size were the controlling factor in taking a tripod with me for travel.  Bottom line: the lower to the ground, the better—as you would expect.

As for the Gitzo and the Induro.  I was a bit disappointed that neither scored 100%.  I can't say for sure to the exclusion of other conclusions, but I think the fact that there is very little weight with M4/3 gear as the factor that caused the increased instability.  When I hung a weight beneath my Gitzo tripod, the success rate increased.  However, I did notice at first that the weight was swinging.  The images made with it swinging were unsharp but once I stopped it from swinging in the wind, the images were fine.  Keep that in mind if you decide to hang weight from the center of your tripod.

Finally, there seems to be a real benefit to enabling IBIS with the Olympus E-M1 Mark II even when mounted on a tripod.  I think I would only do that if the day were windy.  On a calm day, I'm more comfortable turning it off.  With wind, there is movement the system can sense and for which it can compensate evidently.  When calm, nothing moves and my experience (in general) in the past is that IS will hunt to correct movement even if there is none.  In a lens test with my E-M1 a while back, I had inadvertently left IBIS turned on when making test images.  Looking at them later in Lightroom, I noticed, as I quickly paged through the images, that each image was slightly different.  What?  How could that be?  The IBIS was actually moving the field of view as I pressed the shutter each time.  In fact, that is how I realized I had inadvertently left the IBIS turned on.  Otherwise, the images should have been identical but they were not.  IBIS did have an effect.  The wildcard is that I don't know if that still holds on brand new IS systems in other cameras.

This was not a series of scientific tests, by any means.  In fact, I think at some point in time in the future, I may run some of these tests again to raise my confidence level in my methods.  So, take these results in the vein in which they were derived, a practical quick test to gather information so I better know my gear and its limitations.  The better you know your gear, the fewer surprises you will have when it won't do something you thought it would do.  Avoid disappointment!

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

All content on this blog is © 2013-2017 Dennis A. Mook. All Rights Reserved. Feel free to point to this blog from your website with full attribution. Permission may be granted for commercial use. Please contact Mr. Mook to discuss permission to reproduce the blog posts and/or images.