Originally Posted by
Lon Howard
From one who is still learning the tripod ropes himself:
I will echo that in spades. Even before learning all the great things your tripod can do for you, you have to practice using the controls until they become second nature. Otherwise, you get frustrated with one thing, forget about all the other things, and kerplunk, your camera hits the ground. Beyond that, I would not try to learn too many things at once - pick one new skill and work on that till you get it down, and then go on to another one.