A few weeks ago, I spent two weeks around the state of Washington and visiting the South-West of Canada, British Columbia and Alberta. I am busy with sorting and selecting my pictures taken during this trip. When they will be ready, you will be able to see them in my galleries, of course.
In the meantime, as a teaser, here is a picture taken at sunrise in one of the most iconic places in Banff National Park: Moraine Lake.
My Manfrotto 190B tripod has been following me everywhere and in all conditions for many years. It is now quite battered and its head even has a bent handle. But, until now, no parts had gone missing. That is… until my latest trip to the US.
Utah had a very wet early October in 2010 and it meant that the clay soil of the Capitol Reef National Park had turned into deep mud when I was there.
After several days of continuous rain and thunderstorms, I finally had the chance to take some pictures under the sun but with my feet (and those of my tripod) in deep red mud. A few hours after I had taken the following picture, I noticed that one of the rubber feet of my tripod was missing. It probably remained stuck in the deep mud. So if you ever find a black tripod rubber shoe somewhere along the main road crossing the park, it could be mine. 😉
This meant that I ended up with a tripod with one leg slippery and unstable on hard ground. Not the best for a piece of equipment that is supposed to bring good stability to my camera ! Back home, I started looking for a replacement for this little piece of rubber. Looking at the Manfrotto catalog, I quickly understood that to replace one rubber shoe, I would need to buy a set of three costing at least 25 Euros. A bit expensive for such a small piece of rubber !
By coincidence, I noticed that the rubber shoes at the end of the metal legs of chairs or stools were very similar to what I was looking for. I easily found these rubber stool shoes in a local DIY shop (Brico here in Belgium). For the price of a 1/10th of the official Manfrotto spare part, I had a set of four of these rubber shoes. They exist in several diameters and the 19mm ones fitted perfectly on my tripod model. Other available sizes would easily fit other tripod legs diameters.
Actually, they look strikingly similar to the original Manfrotto tripod shoes that were attached to my tripod (see the pictures below).
So, for those of you looking for a replacement rubber shoe for your tripod (Manfrotto or other), look no further than your local DIY shop !
For all of you who did not receive the paper version of my greetings card, here is the picture that I had chosen to illustrate it.
This was taken on a snowy early October 2009 morning in in the Lava Beds National Monument in Northern California. These mule deers (Odocoileus hemionus) were posing very patiently for me. You may have seen this picture already in my California-Oregon photo trip.
