Charlie Kim's report on camera/head/tripod vibration (March 2005) (c) charlie kim

Introduction of the document
This thirteen page report is to visualize the generally known knowledge about a good practice of using tripod in still shot photography.

- Mirror lock up in real life
- Affecting parameters on tripod vibration
- Handheld vs. tripod
- Maximum resolution in presence of vibration
- General thoughts on tripod vibration
- Test results using laser vibrometer or capacitive gap sensor in various situation
- How to provide more stable support for camera
- Using Markins tripod base for more rigidly assembled tripod setup
- Short review on Markins ball head performance

Various equipments were used but I could test with only limited items. I'd tested with many types of camera, head, tripod but the only results using below products are in my document.

Camera: Hasselblad 205FCC, Nikon F100, Nikon D2H, Sigma SD9, Leica R6.2, Test bar for extreme case test
Head: Markins M10, Markins M20, Arca Swiss B1, FOBA, Hakuba, Gitzo off center ball head
Tripod: Gitzo 1227, Gitzo 1327, Manfrotto 190, Manfrotto 055, Linhof heavy duty two-section pro tripod

Update information
(10-13-2007)
Minor corrections.
Copyright information updated.
PDF document name is unchanged: report4e6.pdf

(previous)
This is 4th revision after first posted in January 2004.
For full text, follow below link to open or download Acrobat document. (577kb)
And because of very high compression of the document, I recommend you to download it for viewing.
http://markins.com/charlie/report4e6.pdf

If you don't have Acrobat reader, then follow below link to download reader.
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html

Future update will still have the same following address.
http://markins.com/charlie/report.html

Thanks,
July 2005