Underwater tripod

Hi All,

I can remember i saw a thread about tripods for underwater use. I couldn't find it anymore so that's why i started a new one. Here in the Netherlands there is a guy who produces them and he opened a webpage for it:

http://www.corbisnis.nl/index.htm

There was an article about it in our main dutch diving magazine 'duiken'.

Unfortunately the webpage only in dutch but the only clickable text on the page is his emailaddress so it is possible to contact him, in case that you're interested.

Cheers, Udo

Do you know how he have solved the problem with attaching the housing to the tripod?

My sea&sea housing does not have a treded hole like the camera does.

The tripod looks cool but a bit to low. In the situations I would like to use a tripod I want to get up atleast 1,5m (or more) from the bottom.

/Jonas

Ultralight also makes a special clamp to make a tripod.

Ultralight

Check it out under Accessories.

I suppose you could use this adapter attached to mount it to an ultralight tray on the housing.

Has anyone used this. I would need much more patience

I didn't know about the ultralighttripod, but it looks like a simple solution too in case you have plans for tripod use.

The legs of the tripod developed by Cor are extendable with locline parts. But i don't think that a height of 1,5 m or more is possible. I'm sure he can develop something else to put in between the loclines.

How the tripod is mounted on the housing i do not know. As far as i know it was only used with ikelite housings. But i can ask him tonight because then we'll meet. or you could contact him yourself.

Udo

I havent thought of using the strobe arms for connecting the tripod but it makes sense, since you do not need the strobes if you are shooting with avaiable light and tripod.

I think the best thing is toy buy a sturdy but cheap topside tripod and attaching a few led wheights on it, its prety easy to fold befora and after use and you can easily get the desired lenght.

BTW, here is a recent thread on the tripod discussion.

All the best, James

I spoke to the guy and he makes the tripod custom fit on any housing. For Subal he already has experience. He also mentioned another possibilty for this type of tripod: you can mount it on anything by twisting an extended arm around (by merging all three arms to one arm) for example a shipwreckpart.

About not using a strobe with long shuttertime: when you do slowsync photography, you'll both have a long shuttertime and a flash, in this case you can't use your strobearm for a tripod, but i don't know whether anyone has experience with this underwater.

But anyway, i don't own this tripod myself and i don't have any experience with it, but i thought that other photographers that are interested should know about the existence of this tripod.

James, i wanted to post this message on the trhread you mentioned, but i couldn't find it, so that's why you found it here.

cheers, Udo

The legs of the tripod developed by Cor are extendable with locline parts.

This isn't me btw. In The Netherlands it's a pretty common name

Cor

While it might be nice to have the stability of a tripod UW (and certainly opens up some interesting photo possibilities), I'm amazed (dispappointed???) that no one's raised the envronmental concerns of being careful where you stick the tripod legs.

Unless you're on a barren sandy plain (and even then, there might be some debate), you could end up doing some serious reef damage if you're not careful where the legs go. And I'm sure we'd all agree that no shot is worth intentionally causing damage to the very enviromment we're trying to capture with our images.

As one who's seen countless careless photogs over the years (and I'm sure Mike Veitch can back me up on this) I thought it was an issue at least worth mentioning. I'm sure no one here has any intention of doing reef damage to get a shot. But it's something I think we all need to keep in mind.

Hi ,

I used a normal aluminium made tripod for some pool test shots I weight it with a 2Kg and saddled my C7070 on, nice to do but if you want to take long shutter pics you need also a distance shutter to provide shakeing the setup ..... or your cam has a mirror up delay mode. A salt water resistance high tripod is a part you will not get on market you always have to do by your own , and use with care to the reef and sandy grounds.......but always the housing has to have a tripod 1/4 " thread in bottom or tray or if not you have to add a plate with the right one.

Michael

Untill now the tripod developed by Cor (Kuyvenhoven,.... sorry Cor B, indeed your name is too common... ...), was only used in cold, green north sea water. Over there, environmental damage caused by a tripod is nothing compared to what any fisherman or wreckdiver does. Every weekend pretty large numbers of wreck-demolition-divers go there to plunder some souvenirs for in their sheds..... But that's another topic. I just want to mention that there are a lot low light places which are not as sensitive a coral reef, but still worth taking an image of and then a tripod can be very useful.

I think that any user of a tripod should be aware of what damage they can cause, but isn't that always the case when you do a dive, also without a tripod? I think it speaks for itself that you don't put a tripod on places where you aren't even allowed to place a finger.

>>>but if you want to take long shutter pics you need also a distance shutter to provide shakeing the setup ..... <<<<

Another option for releasing the shutter for long shuttertime exposure is by using the self timer. That's how i used to do this before i had my D200.

>>>but always the housing has to have a tripod 1/4 " thread in bottom or tray or if not you have to add a plate with the right one.<<<<

As far as i Know Cor K., he's capable of finding a technical solution for any type of housing.

Greetz, Udo

Unless you're on a barren sandy plain (and even then, there might be some debate), you could end up doing some serious reef damage if you're not careful where the legs go.

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You make an important note here, but I do not think that this si a big problem.

The occations when you need a tripod is when light is low, this is a far as I have understood it only true if you are shooting deep wrecks in the tropics.

Other occations when you might need a tripod is in northern waters when vis and or light is low, and here there are no fragile reefs that can brake if you are careful.

Fdog>> have e feed good points in his tread, A good tripod for wreck photography should be both large and heavy.

While it might be nice to have the stability of a tripod UW (and certainly opens up some interesting photo possibilities), I'm amazed (dispappointed???) that no one's raised the envronmental concerns of being careful where you stick the tripod legs.

 

Unless you're on a barren sandy plain (and even then, there might be some debate), you could end up doing some serious reef damage if you're not careful where the legs go. And I'm sure we'd all agree that no shot is worth intentionally causing damage to the very enviromment we're trying to capture with our images.

 

As one who's seen countless careless photogs over the years (and I'm sure Mike Veitch can back me up on this) I thought it was an issue at least worth mentioning. I'm sure no one here has any intention of doing reef damage to get a shot. But it's something I think we all need to keep in mind.

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Hi. I dive with Cor Kuijvenhoven regularly and I can answer some of your questions

In the Netherlands we are used to diving in poor visibility (2 metres/6 feet is quite normal in some places). We do not have coral reefs. Most divesites have a sandy (or muddy) bottom.

The advantage of using the tripod is that you can get more depth in the pictures.

See http://gallery.zweijtzer.nl/v/Spiegelplas/DSC_6984s.jpg.html

This foto has an exposure of 20 seconds. You can acutally see more on the photo than I saw diving there that day ";-)

The connection to the Ikelite housing is done through the screws on the bottom side of the strobearms. See http://gallery.zweijtzer.nl/v/Spiegelplas/...tatief.jpg.html for a better picture.

That's probably the best picture to show our great delicate reefs..

Too bad the manta isn't visible due to the long exposure.

Though I can't wait to be in our 3'C Oosterschelde tomorrow after a week at the office.

The modular hose in the original post works well for building a tripod as well as a million other things

That stuff is almost as useful as duck tape!

The modular hose is a product called Loc-Line and is sold by several retailers online. In the past I have ordered from modularhose.com Materials (Use the 3/4" tubing) will cost ~40USD for fittings and tools and ~22USD per foot of tripod height. A few bolts, a solid metal plate with a few drilled holes and you have yourself a useable tripod that can be squished down to almost nothing.

I don't think a tripod is inherently bad for the reef. Tripods don't hurt reefs... careless divers hurt reefs.

I must say, Cor's version is excellent craftsmanship. Mine is... well... not quite as pretty.

The low teck solution.

I bought a very old style tripod with some issues at a garage sale for $3 for the purpose of taking it underwater. Once I found and removed the clump of fossilized masking tape out of the gears it actually worked pretty smoothly. I then painted it black and put some thick boat grease on all the working parts. The tripod was deployed 20 feet down and I used a second weight belt with lots of lead to hold her down.

What I wanted to capture was some sort of pattern of luminescence in the turbulence as the currents swept plankton by the pillars of a large bridge at night. What I got was a set of very artistic and weird green Xfiles like images with most of the light coming from a light 100 feet up on the bridge – it wasn't that bright but obviously it was the brightest thing around during the long exposures. The tripod was rinsed off afterwards and was fine – I haven't tried an underwater night shot since but I'd like to. This was done with a Nikonos V with a 15 mm so it was easy to connect to the tripod and the camera had much less surface area for the current to push on than my 20d ike rig.

The tripod legs were placed on the sand facing the bridge pillars; no visible life forms were harmed in the creation of the images or this email.

TheQ, did you find it needed to add extra weight to your tripod?

I'm thinking of using the modular hose for that purpose but I'm not sure that the all set will be stable enough since I'll use also strobes on the mounting camera.