At InterBEE 2017 in Japan, bespoke manufacturer Technical Farm was showing two new twists on existing products. We have all seen tripod extenders and high hats before, but I had never seen an adjustable version.
If you aren’t familiar with tripod extenders, they allow you to increase the height of your tripod when you need to shoot over someone or something, or just need to get a high angle shot. The way they work is you attach the tripod extender to your bowl and then place your tripod head on top of the extender.
Usually these are a fixed height and if you want to go lower you need to adjust your tripod legs. Technical farm however, have made a version where you can adjust he height of the extension. This makes a tripod extender a lot more versatile and easy to use as you can set it at exactly the right height you need without having to adjust your tripod legs.
The tripod extender is handmade and beautifully finished. It is designed to take either 100mm or 75mm tripod heads. Technical Farm told me that it can easily handle payloads that far exceed 60kg. It can be purchased directly from Technical Farm for 100,000 JPY (around $890 USD).
Technical Farm also had an adjustable high hat, that also looked quite nice. Again, just like the tripod extender, it gives you a lot more versatility. Using high hats is often very limiting as you are stuck to operating at a certain height, but the Technical Farm version allows you to adjust your high hat to just the right height you need.
Just like the tripod extender, it is made by hand and beautifully constructed. It is extremely solid and can handle very large payloads. I tried standing on the high hat when it was set in its tallest position and it didn’t move at all. The adjustable high hat retails for 50,000JPY (around $450 USD).
Technical Farms main webpage is only available in Japanese so it does make purchasing from overseas quite difficult. If you are interested in any of their products please let us know in the comments section below and we can pass along your details or inquiries.
