This is the new Cruise Ship Terminal in Townsville designed by Arkhefield Architects in Brisbane. Apart from working on my portfolio I've been keen to try out my new tripod.

I have a shed full of dead tripods and my latest disaster has a habit of sinking to the ground at the worst possible time. Add to that legs that fall off as I'm trying to set it up - NO MORE! I screamed. So after a few hours surfing the net I came up with a manufacturer in the States that does nothing else except produce amazing camera support systems call Really Right Stuff. My carbon fibre bundle of joy on three legs turned up a couple of days ago. After unpacking and having a play I did the laser test to see if it really was as sturdy as it should be. All I wanted was a truly stable platform that was light to carry and quick to set up.

To test a tripod you stick a laser pointer to the lens and shoot the red beam to a wall at least 10 meters away. If the little red dot moves during the exposure the tripod sucks. If its steady then the support is rock solid which equals sharper images. Mounted on my new RRS tripod that little red dot didn't move one bit - even with the tripod at full extension over my head - yippy :-)

So here it is - not only does it look great and feel amazing it actually does what a tripod should do - hold that camera rock steady. After much thought, measuring, checking weights and so on I settled on the TVC-24L + BH-40 Ballhead. Good choice Andy as this combo seems to have the best support to portability ratio suitable for DSLR shooting with wide to medium telephoto lenses.