[Bowregard]

The carbon fiber rods I have investigated don't really save much in the way of cost. Unless you buy expensive trekking poles I would be tempted to get another set and just take the lower sections of one with me: 1. Keeps the package compact 2. Light weight - Upper section is the heaviest. 3. Consistent interface to your mount. 4. Built-in replacements if you should break/lose/etc. one of your pole sections.

[Schroder]

[Eric Hansen]

fwiw, Back in the day (before digital, image stabilization) I would hang water bottles and rocks (in a stuff sack) from the middle of an aluminum tripod to stabilize it.

[neek]

Sorry this is a bit of a tangent but the above post made me wonder if this could all be done in software. Consider google's HDR+, which takes a burst of underexposed shots, aligns them, and does some fancy summing to get the final image. With current image stabilization you can get what, 1/2 sec exposures pretty reliably? So take a series, throw out the blurry ones, then align and sum the rest (in an automated fashion). Computational photography on cameras really needs to catch up to phones. Certainly not a novel idea and I'm sure there's already software to do it, but I haven't seen it, aside from specialized astrophotography programs. (Automatically separating sky from ground would be nice too so you could do software-based star tracking against a static landscape.) Anyway the pole-tripod idea is really clever and it's fun to watch the progress. They also sell hiking pole monopods but I'm too cheap for that and usually get by with just resting the thing on a stick.

[Bowregard]

Aww shucks, You folks are taking all the fun out of this with your pre-built products and software solutions. Haven't you ever just decided to build something to see if you could make it work? It must be the engineer in my blood but I get a weird thrill out of trying to build a better mouse trap, PVC catapult, Egg protecting car physics lab, photography lights, agility course, etc. Is it just me that goes into the hardware store and 90% of the time I can't even explain what I need because I know they don't sell it for that purpose? Sorry, I digress. Maybe I better go build something to get my mind off it.

[neek]

I totally agree. But, since weight saving was the stated goal, I had to mention alternatives. I just read that Photoshop (which I don't use) does automatic stack alignment. So I'm really not clear on why anyone would carry a tripod while backpacking--again, if weight were the primary goal. It's still a cool project regardless.

[Kenji]

The tripod worked well, light (enough) and stable. The knobs seemed to too small, need to be replaced. The basic design is pretty satisfactory, I would redesign the pole clamping parts. The overall height was a little short even using just the LCD screen, I might add a short center pole.

10sec F2, 7 frame composite

8sec F2, 7 frame composite

15min F5.6, 8 frame composite

I'll report another when I finish the 4th model

[Gil]

Nice results!