My new tripod “Krutoy_duvuk” and how I went green

Such a stupid blog headline came about for a reason, but because the topic I propose to discuss consists of two events that happened here at the same time. I purchased a new Cullmann photo stand, and it came to me in the “green (green) package” from TECHNIKdirekt.de online store. And I’m going to discuss the quality of this German product (which, in German, costs a little more than a fig), and how I hypocritically get into the “green” ideology, which actually has the same attitude to the preservation of nature as Nazi medical researchers Osventsa to the Red Cross.



So, my new tripod Cullmann Magnesit 528 , not that the new cool man, but in general the first tripod in my life. I am a photographer, in general, from an amateur league ( here you can look at a couple of my photos ), so I don’t know any professional moans about carbon / non-carbon and hydraulic / counterbalance head. But seeing what a wide range of names and price tags presented in any store, it was decided to take the “famous German brand” and the top model from a non-professional line, although a price tag of 150 euros gives hope for at least some proximity to professional quality. Needless to say that “reviews” on youtube and other expert reviews sing the praises of this tripod, and do not even allow to doubt the correctness of the choice. In general, one day after ordering, on an early Saturday morning, my sleep is disturbed by the DHL courier, delivering a “green” box, which we will talk about at the end of the review.





')

When buying a vehicle, I will definitely read user reviews, and among their multitude it is good to help orient one’s specified level of expertise. Moreover, you always need to focus on the audience from the middle range, but it will turn out, as in the reviews on the lenses on the photo.ru:



Beginner amateur with the experience of 1-3 years:

This is my first elka. The lens, frankly, turned out to be unsuccessful among the Japanese. Awful distortion around the edges at a wide angle. Disturbed color transmission starting at f / 5.6. Stabilizer does not work out its 3 feet, maximum 1.8. The zoom wheel has a backlash of one and a half degrees, and the USM engine issues a 30dB squeak.

Professional photographer with experience of 25+ years:

The lens gives a live picture. Soft transitions from the focal range to the range do not spoil the mood of the landscape. The feeling of weight in the hand gives confidence in a good picture. The price tag of 2.5 thousand euros is justified. Recently I bought the second version of the model for 3.5, but I threw it on the shelf, because I am not happy, and I continue to use the first one.

That is, it is almost useless to rely on reviews from extreme groups. The first ones meticulously compare technical indicators with the declared parameters of the manufacturer, while the latter have already found their state of nirvana and just come from owning a gadget. The average group has some kind of own experience with other models and tries to compare, looking for positive and negative sides.



In accordance with the classification of photo.ru, I should be referred to the 0th category of experts, that is, not to experts at all, since I have nothing to compare with. But on the other hand, I know some quite good products, which, although specific, but nevertheless test them on users who have absolutely no experience and have never used such products at all. This helps to get valuable facts about the “usability” of the product, when it is not the experience gained over the years that is applied, but also habits that are not necessarily useful, but just common sense. Because they have nothing more to compare with, they never had it. So I, armed with common sense, unpack and feel my first tripod, holding my breath in the hope of feeling awe of the legendary German quality.







First impressions are good - the tripod is really light, as stated about 2.5 kg, which greatly facilitates its transfer to itself in mountainous and other places. This is achieved mainly due to the thin aluminum tubes that make up the tripod, and plastic locks and fasteners. However, further, as you move and install a tripod on the floor, some things begin to alarm. The first thing I noticed was that on my ideal parquet floor (ideal, since I measured it with a building level up and down), the tripod could not stand exactly on its own levels. And who to believe? No, I, of course, believe in the construction tool, since it has a length of about one meter, and it is simple as ... a construction level. But these cones, bolted to the edges of the platform on the head, they do not inspire.







Further, in order not to scratch the parquet floor, you need to unscrew the rubber tips in order to hide the sharp metal endings of the legs. That's right, but having unscrewed them by the required amount, they risk simply falling off, as they dangle like ... on .... And they should stand steadily the entire tripod. Needless to say, then it is not stable. And not only because of the rubber legs, but also because the plastic “knees” at the base of the legs do not provide sufficient stiffness.







Yes, they have two fixed positions, but they are not fixed enough so that the tripod does not move with each light touch. Of course, experienced photographers hang ballast on a hook at the bottom of the bar, which increases stability, but it is there, in the fields, in the mountains, in pursuit of the sun and the picturesque view, in the wind and in the rain. But why this three-legged miracle cannot stand quietly at home, even in the second position with legs wide apart, on a dry parquet, where conditions are so close to ideal, and where, according to the laws of physics, each body having three reference points must stand bil-but? I can only imagine how frantic the tripod owners cost less than 100 euros (and most of them), because their tripods probably still swing themselves and jump from time to time. Although the idea is clear: upgrading such a cheap tripod to my model, the user had to finally find peace and mental balance.







Well, completing my whining about a failed syncope from German quality, I will list a few points that my common sense attributed to the manufacturer’s shortcomings. So much publicized locks, which are covered with something nano-tech, and produce a “pleasant click”, closing the advanced level of the foot. I do not know, pleasant clicks are made by equipment intended for diving and mountaineering, instilling confidence that everything is securely fixed. Here is some kind of indistinct ellipse lock that hangs up to the very moment of the circuit. Oh yeah, so that it does not dangle so much, the manufacturer carefully put the hex key.







The bar, beautifully painted in advertisements, looks straight carbon, although in reality it is the same painted aluminum. Well at least on the manufacturer's website, the picture looks believable. So, you will not believe it, it also dangles, deviating from the axis, if it is not tightened tightly with a clamp. It is clear that it should be fastened, but why not fit the diameter of the rod to the plastic crimping ring more dense? There's still a bunch of garbage between them can fit (and will definitely appear over time).







What else is a little worse is mounting the carcass to the platform. You can expose a tripod for as many levels as you want, but all these efforts will break about the idiocy of the platform builder with a quick latch. The carcass on it, although not pretty loose, doesn’t exactly hold the horizon, and it will be necessary to display it at its own electronic level. Why then needed all these bells and whistles at the zoo? Well, if you completely throw out at least some photoexpert, and leave common sense alone, then he came to a dead end with me and stands there and is perplexed, since he cannot find the answer to the next question. How to remove the carcass of the camera from the platform, which is made under the right-handed person, and is held accordingly by the right hand, when it is necessary to release the fastening latch, and on it, in turn, the protective dog (also you will not believe) also sharpened under the right hand? Is this what they call a quick-fix solution? Now, if I had another hand growing from the same place, from where and from the designers, then, probably, everything became completely comfortable.







I'm not very tired of my whining? I just have a couple of moments that are puzzling - clamps. All clamps - this is sheer bewilderment. Apparently, the designers did not see anything more complicated than the fixing bolt for fixing the needle in the leg of the school compass - do you remember it all the time it fell inside the drawing lessons? How to explain, then, that for fixing the rotation in any dimension of the tripod head, much less than a quarter of the detent handle rotation is required? It may be good, but here is the opposite effect - less than a quarter of the reverse rotation of the lock is enough, and your device collapses from its plane on a dangling hinge. Did Kuhlman’s development engineers really lack simple pleasures in their childhood and never had access to smooth fixators? Well, these are, if you want to fix it even more, then you have to turn the handle even more, and vice versa. Probably, they had a hard time, when, having slightly turned the hot water valve, a stream of boiling water fell on them in a powerful stream. And they carried this dramatic experience through their whole life and embodied in their best product.







Now really stop whining. In general, a tripod is not bad, and former users of cheaper or Italian tripods will say it is very good. Let's now go through the “green” ideology and see what European defenders of nature offer us.



This part of the theme was not, if not for a small option on the website of the online store, which caught my attention with a bright inscription: “green packaging”. This is not surprising, in Europe they pay a lot of attention. Surprised that this additional option cost 5 cents. And here cheap protectionism works, when you don’t have to take 10-20 euros from the family budget for nature conservation, just don’t mean 5 cents to buy. It's so easy to throw a trifle and feel a slight chest stretching from pride, considering himself involved in the preservation of nature.



What do we give for these five cents? The main product is a large GOGREEN inscription, printed along with the rest of the postal information on the DHL receipt on the box, and another small colored sticker on the plastic pocket with accompanying documents, which additionally informs us that the parcel was CO2-neutral. All the same common sense questions, but why did they reduce CO2 emissions in this way, because when burning in a garbage factory, this sticker does not emit carbon dioxide? Because everything else that the manufacturer used for packaging, very much even, and in quite large quantities. And if it is simply crushed and buried, it will be chewed by nature for decades. There is no talk about the separation of such complex packages into components and processing; too many heterogeneous components are assembled in one box.







Let's see what the German “conservationists” sent us. Immediately, I note that this is not only the online store, but Cullman itself.



1. A rigid cardboard box that is not recyclable, since film polygraphy is applied on it, and only pure cardboard is subjected to processing. Wrapped with high-strength packing tape, in four places, which will also be burned and will release a lot of unpleasant things.







2. Inside the box, too, everything is interesting from the point of view of “green”: a plastic bag and a pimple package, a polypropylene head protection cap, and a lot of printed materials.







3. Printed materials are worthy of special attention. Advertise this tripod! Yes, this is exactly what I need right now, after I have already bought and unpacked it. This is a colorful booklet on a string (synthetic), on which the main advantages of the product are listed using the latest achievements of the printing industry, under a laminating film. Do I need to hang it around my neck and walk proud?







4. Quick instructions on a separate sheet and full instructions in the booklet on the use of a tripod, in five European languages. And the most epic at the end - the form for registering the product on a separate sheet of excellent glossy paper. Yes, yes, the paper form, if suddenly one of the Europeans for whom this product is intended turns out to be at the North Pole, removing bears, and wants to immediately register their product to receive a 10-year guarantee, they can fill out the paper form and send it a letter on postal dogs. I now wonder, environmentalists have ever bought goods from Japanese companies, well, the same Philips? I, for example, having unpacked my new TV set, moreover, I didn’t find anything there, except for cushioning cardboard, about the same consistency and shape, as egg trays are made, so there wasn’t any instructions, and there were no CDs, except cables . Just a nightmare of some kind. And on a small gray piece of paper, along with an apology, the address of a web page was written, where you can find everything, and instructions in what language you want, and files for downloading, and advertising for new models. And not a single word from the protection of nature! Just sapienti sat.











5. Well, the crowding of stupidity and hypocrisy of green defenders is crowned by three sheets on bleached (with chlorine) paper of increased density of accompanying documents again from TECHNIKdirekt.de, in which: on the first - five informative lines of duplicate information from the order box, due to huge fonts and multiple spaces are stretched on the entire A4 sheet, on the second - in bold laser printer (perfectly burning ozone, intensively highlighting more positively ions during printing), standard return rules and other disclaimers from responsibility, which, by the way, could easily be found on the store's website, and, finally, on the third - a printed form for returning goods. And what is most interesting, all this pile of unnecessary information is printed using one-sided printing.











Someone will say that they are too biased and find fault with a lot of little things. But let me say, such environmental hypocrisy, and even in Europe, where large-scale funds are taken from the taxpayers ’pocket on a permanent and legal basis for environmental programs, is completely unacceptable. Why, for example, the company Amazon, that in the States, that in Germany (and other American corporations that I mentioned in Habré), do not boast of their commitment to a green ideology, and do not speculate on the environmental feelings of customers, just pack goods into easily recycled cardboard , uses the same recycled paper for depreciation, and offers to return the return form itself, if in one case out of a hundred it is still needed? It’s a very unpleasant trend to splurge customers, using environmental hype to somehow stand out, earn more competitors, and absolutely not take care of this ecology, and it, unfortunately, exists not only by the companies I described. - there are many such examples (and some believe that the ecological ideology is generally a complete paragraph).