Tripod and Remote Release

Well now you know that I’ve bought a tripod and remote release. In fact these two things are somewhat impulse purchases as I didn’t do any research about inexpensive tripods and the remote release prior to buying them. What I know is that I’d need to get these two stuffs to do long exposures. Since our class is going to Carol’s orchard like, tomorrow, thus I’m planning to capture the Leonid meteor shower as the orchard is far away from the city (source of light pollution) and the meteor shower starts around this time too, as usual, annually.

Tripod

Initially I thought of buying a Manfrotto tripod. But then, currently I don’t have the cash for it and I need it quite urgently, so I settled down for cheap tripods. I lowered my price range to, lol, 200 bucks which is dirt cheap. I went to a photography equipment shop and saw a few tripods standing. I chose the tallest one, which can extend as high as me (this is important in choosing the right tripod). So here it is. SteinZeiser SZ-70. Never heard of it? Nor do I before I see it.

This light tripod feels reasonably steady. Of course I don’t expect a rock solid one like Manfrotto, but since I seldom shoot things that requires tripod, this 150 bucks tripod does the justice. It is tall enough, all controls feel smooth as they should be, and it serves my purpose well. The downside is that it’s really cheap (we just love expensive stuffs) and built so, to an extent. Almost all parts of it other than the legs are made from plastic. The plastic itself feels sturdy, but the joints between the plastics seems fragile. Another thing is that it’s light. Quite light indeed, I think it’s made from aluminium, err no, titanium. This means that I should not do excessively long exposures, well, hmm. Oh a bonus point for light tripod is the ease to carry around. Seriously, carrying around heavy photography equipments is a pain. But we all just love to do so.

Before I bought the remote release, I’d read something about long exposure with remote release. Unfortunately though, many people simply don’t know that this IR remote control can do long exposure. The fact is that it does, and it does it pretty well, just like a cable release. The only minus point is that the IR sensor on the camera will need to be activated for the whole period of exposure and this uses battery power. But so what? My D90 has marvellous battery efficiency and I’m not worried of power shortage by any means. What’s more, I have a second battery too.

Remote Release

By the way have I mentioned how incredibly small is the remote release? Three of them can fit on my palm, and five of them can fit on my hands! And its thickness is barely half of that of my fifth finger. In other words, this toy is really tiny.

Here is it in action:

Beep!

Ok, enough.