I am a firm believer in the power of the tripod. Tripods let you do wonderful things. You can easily composite, take long exposures, do light painting, it is just an awesome tool. When it comes to video tripods are even more essential, at least if you want to take a static shot.
But tripods don’t all match. And that would have been ok, only switching from one tripod to another is not as easy as it should be.
Most tripods have a separate head, and that head usually connects to a tripod via something called quick release plate. While there are some standards (RC2 from Manfrotto, Arca Swiss), the need to swap quick plates is not that rare. In fact, I own (and use) 4 tripods (6 if you count Gorilla pods), and almost each and every one of them has a different plate.
And I swap tripods quite a bit. I use one for stills (with an RC2 Rapid Connect compatible head), another for video (with a Manfrotto 501PL Rapid Connect Sliding Plate) and sometimes I just need to mount my DR-70 between the head and the camera.
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