Tripods - Metal vs Wood

[Hans Tucker (Hans)]

I expressed interest in a metal tripod that is for sale on the classifieds, which I will probably miss out on due to another interested party getting in first, and it has me wondering whether a metal tripod has a distinct advantage in the area of stability and vibration dampening compared to a wooden tripod.

Any readers have experience in this area and want to offer your views.

[dannat (Daniel)]

for light weight tripods i have preferred those with wooden legs...Al is worst i reckon steel is in the middle. have not had one with CF legs

[floyd_2 (Dean)]

I owned a Televue Ash Gibraltar mount years ago and thought that it was an excellent wooden tripod. I used a Tv104 on it, but did end up getting vibration suppression pads. The pads were a minor improvement in that setup.

I currently own a GSO ATZ mount that has aluminium legs, and use it as a grab and go mount for my 80mm guide scope. I'm actually really impressed with this mount, as I didn't have very high expectations (my experience using a photographic tripod for that scope was terrible - useless in fact). The GSO ATZ is a really solid mount IMO and excellent value.

For visual use with a smaller scope - the GSO ATZ is a great budget mount. The only drawback I guess is that it's not the tallest mount in the world, which can be a problem when using the finder.

It probably gets down to what you're going to be using the mount for, and the type and size of scope that you'll be using.

Dean

[mercedes_sl1970]

Hans

I used to have an EQ5 a few years ago with aluminium legs. The mount was probably overloaded with a 150mm f8 refractor and used to take a while to damp down. I ended up making a set of extendable wooden legs out of some ash and noticed a dramatic improvement. Damping was down to a couple of seconds and almost instantaneous with a lighter scope.

Andrew