3 Legged Thing Vanz verdict
Summary
The 3 Legged Thing Vanz ‘footwear’ can be used on the maker’s Legends and Pro tripods to extend the legs and provide extra protection on poor surfaces or in place of legs to make a tabletop tripod! They might look like a novelty but are actually rather useful.
For
+ Strong, useful, quick to fit
+ Ball feet and spikes
+ Converts some 3LT tripods to tabletop use
+ Raises tripod legs above mud and water
Against
– Quite expensive
– Useful not essential?
The 3 Legged Thing Vanz footwear set might look like a solution to a problem you didn’t know you had, but when you try them out in real-world situations their uses become clear.
It’s always good to see new ideas in camera supports, like the bizarre but effective Platypod Extreme, for example, or the 3 Legged Thing Levelling Base.
They can be used in one of two ways. They can be screwed into the legs of tripods like the Leo 2 (the model I tried) in place of the regular rubber feet to provide a few inches more height and, more importantly, to provide better grip and better protection in water or mud or on gravel or rock. It takes just a few moments to unscrew the ball feet on the end to reveal rugged-looking spikes, and it’s much better to have the Vanz feet in mud, water or sand than the bottom section of your expensive carbon fiber tripod.
The other way to use them is to unscrew the legs of your 3 Legged Thing tripod entirely and screw the Vanz feet directly into the tripod spider – you’ll probably want to remove the center column too. This produces a rather odd-looking table-top tripod which has a far higher payload capacity and strength than the usual sort. If you need the legs spread wider for stability, you can still use the leg angle adjusters on the tripod spider, and the ball-shaped Vanz feet will still sit squarely on a flat surface.
The screw threads in the end of the Leo 2 legs (and I guess other 3 Legged Thing tripod legs) have a 1/4-inch thread, while the legs themselves screw into the spider with a 3/8-inch thread, but the Vanz shafts have a 1/4-inch thread at the top and a 3/8-inch adapter sleeve, so they can fit both.
At £69/$70 the Vanz footwear is not exactly cheap, but it’s an appealing solution for messy or damaging surfaces and in principle should fit any tripod with removable feet with 1/4-inch or 3/8-inch screw threads.