 Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to say goodbye to an old friend. My name is David Patton. When I started photography, I wanted to make art. I wanted to be a landscape photographer. But with a family to feed and bills to pay, I decided it would be better to be a working photographer than a starving artist. So I took a job as a photojournalist. 25 years and thousands of assignments later, it was time to go back to my first love. It was time to follow my passion. Come along on my journey to become the best black in my photographer I can be. Whether it be film or digital, I will be sharing what I learned through my successes and my failures and hopes to inspire and educate. This is my journey. This is Bright in the Edge. Well, the time has come to say goodbye to this old friend. This piece of gear has been with me from the very beginning of my photography journey. This is the only piece of gear that I can think of that has been with me through probably 90% of all my nature and landscape photos that I've taken to this date. I get compliments on it all the time. Yes, I'm still using this old bogan. Now, if you've seen any of my videos of me out making photographs, then you've seen this old bogan tripod. It's an ancient tripod. It's by Manfrotto. It's probably 35 years old. The body I believe is a 30-21 and the head is a 30-47. Very heavy duty. Now, I've been thinking about replacing this tripod for a long time, but I've got this thing where if it's not broke, I have a hard time getting rid of it. The thing is rock solid. It definitely was showing its age. Legs weren't as smooth as they used to be. The bushings weren't locking down like they really needed to, but I was making it work just fine. Recently, I took a pretty hard fall and busted off the column lever. I told my wife that I broke my tripod on a fall and she kind of looked at me like, yeah, I bet you're just looking for an excuse to replace your tripod, aren't you? No, the truth is I actually did break it. So, it's time to say goodbye. It's kind of bittersweet though. This thing is a beast. I've hauled it throughout the years, out in the wilderness. I've had a couple lighter, cheaper tripods, but when it came down to serious photography, I always grabbed this thing because I knew that it was going to be rock solid and stable. No matter what camera, what size lens I put on this thing, it would bring back the goods. Super sturdy, but it is built like a tank. It's seen a lot of miles, a lot of trail. It's been in the mud, it's been in the ocean. This thing has not been babied at all. I've actually pretty much abused it. Take it to the ocean. I never cleaned the salt water off of it. It held up quite well for the abuse I gave it. My next tripod is going to have to be the same way because I don't baby my tripods. The one I have now, my new one, came with a padded case. That ain't going to see the light of day. My tripod's got to be tough, but I might wash the salt water off on the new one. This tripod is probably way overkill though for what I'm doing now. My cameras aren't that heavy anymore. I'm doing mostly just landscape photography with it. So I really could get by with something a little lighter, a little more compact. So there really probably isn't a reason to use this anymore. The cast metal here, my goodness. It's just a tank. It's going to feel weird not grabbing this when I head out the door. Now it's probably kind of silly to do a video about my old tripod. But I guess I should give it a little respect for its service. It's been a good piece of gear. Back when I bought this tripod, at the time it was a lot of money to me. And this wasn't like real expensive. It was probably $150, $200, something like that. But at the time for me that was a lot of money. Well, that's still a lot of money for me. My new tripod really isn't a whole lot more. So we'll see how that goes. So this is one last look at my old Bogan. So if you subscribe to this channel because of this tripod, sorry to break the bad news. She's going into retirement. Well that's the end of this video. We're just saying goodbye to my old friend. So until next time, thanks for coming along for the ride. I never worry about wild animals on the wild. I got this thing.