Tripod Shakedown

Amanda and Levar visiting Toronto from Oshawa.

Thursday night. I decided to take the new tripod out on a test run. After the weekly game of soccer and eating out I walked on down to the lakeshore to shoot the skyline, some on coming traffic and eventually make my way up to the business district.

While shooting the York street tunnel I met Amanda and Levar. They had parked their car on queen street, had it towed, and were walking south towards the impound to pick it up. I found out they were from Oshawa and were in town to see a performance at the Rivoli.

It's nice meeting new people in the middle of the night. It goes against the stereotype of a large-ish city being filled with muggers and sex perverts lurking behind every corner. After telling them what I was doing and showing some stills I convinced them that they needed a picture of themselves to help remember the trip to Toronto (not necessarily the car impounding). After a few attempts at shooting them with a long exposure (lit from the side by using my flash manually) I finally ended up with the photo above. They were nice enough to stick around for multiple tries.

After shooting them I walked on up to city hall. I noticed that a lot of banks no longer have their lights on. This is great for conservation of energy but kind of stinks for shooting buildings at night. Even the Skydome's purple lights turned off in the middle of my shoot (it was around 11:53pm).

After the inital tripod trials I'm not too sure I'm totally happy with the new tripod head. It seems to stick a little when adjusting the tilt of each axis and the measurements are hard to read in the dark without a flashlight. Did I mention it was heavy (weighing 4.25 pounds or 2 kg - according to BH photovideo). Also they've moved the tilt control arms on angles that takes some getting used to. I'll try to loosen some of the screws to see if it makes a difference and get back to you.