My Achin' Back; My New Tripod!

Yet another day without much to say. I haven't been writing things about the old days much lately, so I can't fluff up something and put it out there for y'all.

Today is my every-other-Friday-off Friday, so I slept late, and for some reason my back is giving me fits.

We had overcast skies and rain Wednesday night and yesterday, and it's mostly blown through, and my back tends to hurt more when a weather front leaves than when one is about to arrive.

Consequently I cannot predict weather with my aching bones like some, because mine hurts more when the bad weather leaves than when it's almost here.

Just one more way I'm weird, eh?

Warning, Abrupt Subject Change Ahead:

I've been into photography since I was around 12-13, in the eighth grade. And I've mostly been the type of photographer to try to hand-hold my shots unless I was outside at night when hand-holding a 15 second shot is impossible.

Since I didn't use a tripod a lot, I've always had a cheap one. I always wanted a nice one, but them puppies can be ex-pen-sive, believe you me.

Really fussy photographers will easily spend $600 on a decent tripod. Yep, that is not a mistype. Six hundred smackaroos, my friends.

But, being an engineer has it's advantages. Heck, even having the engineer personality type would help here.

What I'm talking about is the type of person, like me, who, when they want to buy something, do what the engineering world calls a "trade study."

Lately I've wanted to buy my first "decent" tripod. But I will NOT, NOT, pay $600 for a tripod. If you put $600 in my hand, I can buy two lenses I'd like to have used on ebay for that. So, no matter what, I won't pay $600 for a tripod unless I was starting a photography business where I'd need a tripod to take heavy abuse, right?

So what happens in a trade study, which is easier with that new-fangled invention called the internet, is that I can go to photography web sites and read the trillions of personal observations on tripods and why joe photographer likes this one, but not that one.

I learned that today's $600 will buy you a decent set of carbon fiber tripod legs and a decent ball head for mounting your camera on.

It turns out that tripod legs and the head that mounts on top come in a dizzying array of types and prices. I won't bore you with the details, this ramble is already boring enough.

But after a couple of months of searching, searching, reading, and whatnot and learning more than even I ever wanted to know about tripods, I finally decided on a Slik 700DX.

It's reasonably priced for a heavy duty tripod, and most important of all, it stretches out really tall.

Some day's I'm 6'2", some days I'm 6'1" (depending on how wore out I am) and I've never had a tripod with legs that would allow me to say, point a camera at the moon without me having to stoop over and then look up into the camera's viewfinder. That's not fun at all, therefore I've done very few shots of the moon or anything where I need the camera pointing up.

A couple of days ago, my new tripod arrived, and it's definitely a sturdy booger. Despite having a screwy back, I'm still a pretty good pack mule, and what many folks consider heavy, I don't.

All of that goes to say this, my life is so exciting right now that a new, heavy duty, TALL tripod purchase was the highlight of my week. I'm going to try to get some photos I've been thinking about now that I have it too.

And. That's my story.

Also, if anyone is foolish enough to try to steal a camera from a 300lb man, I can easily beat him to death with my new tripod.