MeFOTO Globetrotter tripod kit

It is time to talk about what I am using and why.  The curtain raises, revealing the first ever piece of gear reviewed by Odd Angle Photography to be…

The MeFOTO Globetrotter Travel Tripod Kit!

First of all, no photographer I have ever met has been COMPLETELY satisfied with a single tripod.  But I must say, the MeFOTO Globetrotter comes pretty close to perfect for me.  Though other tripods may be better suited for specific tasks, the Globetrotter is now my designated work horse.

The Globetrotter is the largest of the MeFOTO travel tripods.  Its smaller counterparts are the “Backpacker” and the “Road Trip”. Even as the “largest” of the series, the Globetrotter packs down to just 16 inches long and 4.5 inches at its widest diameter… that fits into the second largest compartment of my school backpack.  The Globetrotter accomplishes this by allowing the legs to fold 180 degrees and fold over the extended center column, protecting the ballhead.  Pretty slick.

Two versions and two color schemes are available for this model.  The aluminum version weighs 4.6 lbs and costs $209, while the carbon-fiber Globetrotter shaves 0.9 lbs off for the premium price of $369.  Frankly, $160 is not worth a 0.9 lb weight reduction to me, but if you are an ounce-pincher, $369 is still an excellent price when you consider that many other comparable tripods cost the same but don’t include a ball-head.

Despite its compact and lightweight nature, this is a seriously stable tripod and offers a recessed weight-stabilizing hook on the center column for added stability if needed (but I haven’t found a need to yet in up to 15mph winds).  Speaking of center columns, the Globetrotter’s center column and 4-segment tripod legs extend to a maximum height of 62.4 inches.  Standing at a towering 5’7” tall, I have not even needed to extend the last segment of the legs to comfortably use this tripod.  But, if I did, I would not find this to be an impedance in quickly setting up because the tripod legs are controlled with twist-locks.

One of the most innovative features of this tripod is its ability to easily convert to a monopod using no extra parts.  One of the tripod legs (the one with the foam handle) unscrews from its joint and is screwed into the center column to replace the stabilizing hook (which can be stored on the joint where the tripod leg was located).  Having two pieces of equipment in one slick design combined with its incredible packability really sends this thing off the charts in terms of efficiency and practicality.

The only area that this product falls short in is the ball head.  Though advertised as being able to support 26.4 lbs, I have found that at this weight there is some gentle sliding and shifting unless you “hulk-out” on the tension knobs and tighten them more than any mortal should be expected to.  Even still, it is a nice compact design that does pretty ok at managing heavy loads.  Regarding knobs, there are too many.  This ballhead would really have benefited from having a lever for the Arca-Swiss style mount, rather than a knob.  And then there are three other nobs to cover what I perceive to be 2 functions: (1) keep the panoramic head from rotating and (2) keep the ball stationary.  It is somewhat difficult to make a lot of adjustments while looking through the viewfinder of my camera because of all of the knobs that must be turned to loosen or tighten things on the ballhead.  And finally, why bother making a panoramic ballhead with only the one bubble level located on the mounting bracket?  I can’t imagine that it is an incredibly complicated process to add a bubble-level to the base of the ballhead so as to enable the user to pan and actually follow the horizon.  In my mind this was a pretty major oversight, but perhaps I am unique in that the ground is not always perfectly level when I want to shoot a panorama. I still manage to shoot panoramas, I just can’t use the panoramic feature of the ballhead to do it, which sort of defeats the purpose.  Instead I have to fumble with the nobs every time I move to a new frame.  Fortunately, ballheads can be replaced.  But doing so takes a big chunk out of the value of this kit.  I would have rather paid $350 for an aluminum tripod + better ballhead and have the tripod kit to end all tripod kits.

Despite what my previous paragraph (rant) may lead you to believe, when all is said and done, I am very happy with this tripod and would buy it all over again if given the option.  Good job MeFOTO (but give me a better ballhead next time).

Check out the MeFOTO website here... http://www.mefoto.com/products/globetrotter.aspx

Synthesis:

Crazy-efficient, yet solid, design, smooth-functioning mechanics, and priced to sell, but the ballhead leaves you wanting.

Pros:

Good weight

Incredibly compact

Solid Stability

Smooth movement

Cons:

No bubble level for the base (big con)

Too many knobs on ballhead (slightly irritating)

Legs are sticky on occasion (very small con)

Introduction to Lenses

Despite all of my traveling, I am due for a technical discussion and I refuse to miss a scheduled blog.  This week I would like to shed some light on exactly how lenses work (don’t worry I won’t use that pun more than once).

 Figure 1

A camera lens is actually a series of lens elements, or individual sets of glass lenses.  At its most basic, a lens is simply anything that bends light.  Water droplets, for instance, act as lenses and distort the light reflecting off of an object (Figure 1) and back to the front of your eye (also a lens) before reaching the photoreceptors at the back of your eye (an analog to film or a camera sensor).  Why do we need lenses to create sensible images?  Because when light reflects off of a surface it scatters in all directions and we need to refocus the scattered light into a crisp point so that the image is not blurred.

Imagine that we want to take a picture of the star in Figure 2.  On the far left we have a simple pinhole camera where we have put a piece of photographic film on the inside wall of a box and cut a hole on the opposite side to let light in. When light hits each of the individual blue, green, and red points on the star it will scatter and hit the film at all points between the similarly colored lines.  In other words, the reflected light from the blue point will hit the film at every spot between the two blue lines that extend to the film and so on for the other colors.  You can see how this might make a very blurry and incomprehensible image.  In the top center panel we have made our pinhole smaller, which has improved our image resolution by decreasing the number of angles of scattered light that reaches the film.  Unfortunately this also drastically reduces the amount of light that reaches the film, so we may have a very underexposed slightly blurry image as where before we had a very bright but extremely blurry image.  Let’s take this same concept to the absolute extreme:  on the far right panel we have found a way to make a hole that is exactly one photon (or light ray) wide.  In this scenario we will have perfect resolution in our image because there is only one angle at which light inters the pinhole for each unit of surface area on the object.  But our image will probably be completely black because such low light will not be enough to activate the film.  Enter the lens.  With the lens, the amount of light gathered is equivalent to the far left panel with the large pinhole, but produces an image with a resolution much closer to that of the far right panel.

  Figure 2

Website viewer: “Ok Patrick, that is all well and good but why exactly does a lens bend light in the first place?”

Patrick: “Light passes through different materials at different speeds”

Website Viewer: “I missed that day in high school physics”

Patrick: “Don’t worry, I’m super nerdy and wrote detailed notes that you can benefit from now that you care about the physics of light.”

Imagine that you have a birds-eye view of a marching band practicing on the football field after it has rained, but there is really poor drainage on part of it which makes it very muddy (Figure 3).  These band members are highly trained and will not break a perfect front facing line (all band members in a row will always face the exact same direction and remain shoulder to shoulder).  As they march, the left side of the marching band encounters the mud first and is slowed down.  As a result, the rows must rotate to remain in perfect front facing formation.  The end effect is that the marching band’s direction of travel was “bent” from its original angle of incidence to the new angle of refraction when it encountered the new material (the mud versus the dry ground).  If, however, the marching band approaches the mud head on such that every band member in a row arrives at the mud at the same time (Figure 3D,E, & F), there is no need for the rows to rotate.  The whole formation is slowed down equally, thus the angle of incidence and the angle of refraction are equal and there is no change in direction.  In this analogy the marching band members represent light waves, the dry ground represents air (the first material), and the mud represents a convex lens (new material) in which light travels at a slower speed.

  Figure 3

The further away from the center of the lens a light wave strikes, the more it will be bent.  This is why all of the light gathered by a convex lens will eventually converge at the focal point and then be reflected beyond that point (Figure 1D; the image of the star is upside down from the real object). The degree of curvature determines the angle of refraction, and thus also the focal length.  More curvature = more bend = shorter focal length.

 Figure 4

A camera lens is actually a series of lens elements, which is a series of individual lenses with varying shapes (Figure 4). The basic elements often include: a front element, one or more lens groups, the lens diaphragm, and a rear element (Figure 5).   

 

Figure 5

The number of lens elements in a camera lens can vary based on the number or amount of corrections that must be made so that image appears “correctly” on the camera sensor or film.  The Diaphragm (aperture) is used to adjust the amount of light that reaches the film or sensor and effects the depth of field (the amount of lateral space that is in focus at any one time).  Tune in next time for a continued discussion of aperture, depth of field, and blurriness.

Ciao

-Patrick

P.S. – for further reading on topics covered above, see the following links…

http://optics.synopsys.com/learn/kids/optics-kids-lenses.html

http://www.physicsinsights.org/parabola_focus.html

http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Camera-Lens.html

Featured Artist: Faye Stinehart

My first featured artist will conform to my life’s own chronology.  My mother, Faye Stinehart, is not only the first human that I met in my life but was also the first artist that I ever knew.  She also happens to be my first art teacher, as she was my instructor in elementary school and my own private tutor at home.  But enough with the history, what is it that Faye does?

The more appropriate question is: what doesn’t Faye do?  Faye has the widest breadth of artistic techniques that I have ever seen of any other artist.  Painting with oils, acrylic, and water color, drawing, oil pastels, clay sculpting, etchings, t-shirt printing, carpentry and wood burning, digital and film photography, and, last that I checked, she was thinking of learning how to weld.  She also does all of her own matting and framing.  Sorry mom, I’m sure that I left a ton of things out, but I think those hit some of the major talents.  The point is that she can do A LOT of things and can do them well.

I believe that my favorite of all of her different techniques are her wood burnings.  Aside from being savvy in a wood cutting shop, she manages to create beautifully realistic renderings of people, animals, and landscapes with her excellent use of line and shading (I don’t even know how one “shades” in wood burning but she manages to do it).  This may also be her most called-upon skill.  She has done several commemorative wood burnings of family members and cherished pets.

 

Aside from wood burnings, Faye also produces excellent drawings, particularly of architecture and landscapes.  With a hand that has surgical precision and steadiness she is again able to achieve very realistic images.  She uses this particular talent as a substitute for graphic design when making t-shirt graphics.  That’s right, she makes and prints t-shirt designs unaided by computer software and rivals anyone’s level of detail and clarity.

What’s even better is that she does contract work.  So if you ever need any artistic talent for making gifts, décor, stage design, or just about anything else check out her website www.allphaseart.com or navigate to my “other artists” tab to find a link to her page.  Tell her I sent you.