Can I exceed my tripods max weight rating?

[ksmattfish]

I have heeded the advice and am in the market for a Gitzo I guess. Good grief this "hobby" is expensive.

It's expensive today, but if you use it a lot then by the time a decade has passed it will be saving you money. Cheap tripods get wiggly quickly, and since many cannot really be repaired/tuned-up your only option is to buy another. A $50 tripod once a year for 10 years is $500. My Manfrotto tripod cost me $400 for legs and head, and it's going on 15 years of hard use. It's rolled down hills, fallen off cliffs, been dumped in the river, dragged through swamps, banged around in my car, stepped on and played with by my kids, and often used as a hiking/climbing support for myself (I weigh over 10 times my tripod's weight rating). It's never needed anything more than a bolt tightened now and then. I would've killed at least 20 sub-$100 tripods by now.

 

[LWW]

I don't think that the max weight is about breaking the tripod as much as it is about at what point does the tripod start to become unstable. If you stick a giant camera on a puny tripod it usually doesn't crush the tripod, but it might be more prone to fall over.

*DING*

This is similar in concept to truck weight ratings. You can usually overload a truck by several thousand pounds before a spring will bring. The problem is that it is unsafe to move well before that ... yoiu still have to stop and negotiate turns.

Now, look at a tripod the same way. If it's rated at 15.4 pounds I would bet, please don't try this as it isn't a guarantee, that you could put 75 pounds on top of it before the structure of the tripod would fail.

What you would find however is something extremely unstable and ... once tipped ... the leg taking the load might well crumble as well as the pod falling.

Now, at 18 pounds you are about 17% over capacity which isn't huge.

If I had the chance to sit atop a cliff and get the world's first shot of the spacecraft that landed in the valley field below carrying the Ambassador from Andromeda I would take the chance.

If I HAD to use that setup I would use spikes and DIY guywires off the legs.

Other than that I would upgrade pods.

Too much risk and complication to avoid a relatively small expense.

LWW