Tripod on the camera or the lens?

[Benny2707]

Hi Guys,

Just a quick question, When I've got the 80-200 f/2.8 on my D300 which has a battery grip, where am I best to attach my tripod? Is it better to attach to the bottom of the grip or to the foot on the lens?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Ben
P.S. My tripod is a Manfrotto 190 with a 141RC head
P.P.S. Also, what does Bokeh mean? I've seen it on a few forums in reference to lenses. Any ideas?

[Reschsmooth]

Use the tripod collar on the lens - this will better balance the camera/lens assembly on the central axis of the tripod. Furthermore, the collar rotates, so you will be able to easily switch from landscape to portrait mode without changing the point of view of the camera.

Bokeh refers to the rendition of out of focus elements of an image, typically in the background. If you use your lens, take a photo at 2.8 of an object reasonably close to the lens with the background far away. The background will be out of focus, and this is what is referred to as Bokeh. This out of focus component can either look great (the 80-200 2.8 is reasonably good) or can look pretty ordinary - this is due to a number of reasons, not least the number of blades in your lens diaphragm. For example, the 17-35 and the 85 1.4 have 9-blade apertures, which has the effect of smoothing out the background a little more. Other lenses have fewer, which can be very noticable when you have small highlights in the background.

Hope this helps.

[losfp]

If your lens has a tripod collar, it's probably wise to mount to the tripod using that. It's usually the bigger and heavier lenses that have the collar, and mounting via the camera body would probably result in too much of the weight being forward of the mounting point.

As reschsmooth alludes to, bokeh is a term that is used to refer to the rendition of out-of-focus highlights. It's a subjective thing, one lens may produce bokeh that is pleasing to some and harsh to others.

[Benny2707]

Thanks for the assistance guys. I geddit now!

Cheers

Ben

[Matt. K]

Benny
What a lens throws out of focus can look smooth and creamy and kinda seductive...or harsh and contrasty and hard on the eyes. That's the boke, (correct Japanese spelling) or bokeh (Americanised spelling). Good quality lenses have nice boke. Cheap lenses usually have crappy boke. Is boke important?...Yes. Anything that makes the image more beautiful is important. Better to buy 1 good lens (50mm F1.4 for instance) than a bag full of cheap zooms.

[Blokeman]

I haven't tried it on the D300, but on the D200 I have to remove my MB-D200 grip to mount the tripod on the same lens, my tripod is an 055ProB.
It's worth the mucking around for the nice balance and less camera shake.

[Benny2707]

Benny
What a lens throws out of focus can look smooth and creamy and kinda seductive...or harsh and contrasty and hard on the eyes. That's the boke, (correct Japanese spelling) or bokeh (Americanised spelling). Good quality lenses have nice boke. Cheap lenses usually have crappy boke. Is boke important?...Yes. Anything that makes the image more beautiful is important. Better to buy 1 good lens (50mm F1.4 for instance) than a bag full of cheap zooms.

Makes perfect sense now, it's just hard reading reviews and comments on images and lenses and not knowing what the hell they're talking about!

[Greg B]

Oh happy days, the great bokeh/boke discussion of '05. Good times, good times.

The Ken Rockwell explanation still worthy of a read...

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/bokeh.htm

[Benny2707]

Oh happy days, the great bokeh/boke discussion of '05. Good times, good times.

The Ken Rockwell explanation still worthy of a read...

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/bokeh.htm

More reading, thanks Greg.