Experienced 600 APO users, what tripod setup?

Appears so far from alot of reading this gimbal head design is the way to go also. Decisions decisions.

I need some help from those that have experience using the 600mm APO or something similar in weight. This thing is in a different league in several areas, immense weight being one. I've read through some of the postings on many things, I have never been a tripod user hardly ever, with this lens I must change that thinking. The following is from another thread which I found valuable. Any suggestions would be helpful to me as I want to use this lens to the best of its potential and a tripod appears to be a must, I am not Superman and handheld stuff won't work. Will be using my A700 & grip, I forgot to mention.

roweraay wrote: I think it may be worthwhile to go with a high quality tripod and a high quality head to go with it. Your camera, the tripod, the ballhead etc are all links in a chain and any weakness anywhere can affect your images. For instance, getting a quality tripod and then putting a cheap ballhead on it will not help your images much. Also, it is not the weight of the lens that matters when it comes to obtaining critically sharp images. It is the "effective" FL (or view-angle) of the lens that is even more important than the weight of the gear. The longer the lens, the stabler needs to be the tripod/head combo. Many manufacturers simply publish what kind of weight the tripod can support, which in turn is meaningless when it comes to getting sharp images. More important is what kind of maximum Focal length or view-angle is the Tripod engineered to support.....something that is missing from all of these spec-sheets, except for very few manufacturers. I personally use a couple of Gitzos for my tripods and have a couple of Arca Swiss ballheads. Even though these are all pretty pricey products, I don't think I will need to replace them ever. I also like the Velbon Carmagne line in particular (640A etc), a lot, for their quality and portability while being significantly cheaper than the Gitzos. As far as ballheads, quality will cost money and there is unfortunately no getting away from that fact. But the good thing is that high quality products are silky smooth and rock stable during usage, with none of the instability or roughness that cheaper heads have and will maintain that silky smoothness for a lifetime of continuous usage. I like Arca-swiss products, RRS products, Markins products, Acra-tech products etc., all of whom are designed for a lifetime.

Edited by waleskeg - 11 March 2010 at 01:52