Nobody steals tripods. They migrate - into the wrong van, behind the seamless in studio two, onto a colleague’s shoot and then into their boot - and because every set of black sticks looks like every other set, nothing about a migrated tripod announces whose it is or where it belongs. Support gear is the classic quiet leak: each item cheap enough that nobody investigates, the category expensive enough that someone eventually has to.
What you will learn
- Why support gear leaks
- Labelling legs, heads and plates
- What to record per set of sticks
- Kits, check-outs and van counts
- Wear: heads, locks and plates
- Tools that make this easier
- FAQ
Why support gear leaks
Four habits do most of the damage:
- Anonymity. Carbon legs in a soft bag carry no identity. Whoever picks them up owns them by default.
- Invisibility on the booking. Support gear rides along as “the rest of the kit” - booked with the camera, never as itself, so nobody signs for it.
- Splitting. The fluid head goes for service, the legs stay; the gimbal travels in its own case; the slider lives in whichever van did the last interview job. Halves of a pair are twice as easy to lose.
- Last out, first forgotten. A tripod is the final thing standing at a location wrap, after the cases are already on the truck.
Tripods are the textbook movable asset: no fixed home, no single user, and no ceremony when they move. The register has to supply the identity and the ceremony.
Labelling legs, heads and plates
Because the core problem is anonymity, labelling comes before everything else here.
- Legs: a wrap-around label on the flattest upper section of one leg, clear of where hands grip and clamps bite. Laminated polyester, not paper - support gear lives on van floors and wet ground.
- Heads: a second, smaller label on the side of the body, with its own asset ID. The head is often worth more than the legs and travels alone for service.
- Quick-release plates: too small for a useful QR label. Mark them with a paint pen or engraver and record the marking on the head’s record, so orphaned plates can be repatriated.
- Gimbals and sliders: label the handle base or end block - flat, low-wear surfaces - and label the case they travel in too.
Tip: do the whole store in one labelling session, soft bags included. A half-labelled fleet is worse than an unlabelled one, because people assume the unlabelled half is fair game.
What to record per set of sticks
| Field | Why it matters for support gear |
|---|---|
| Asset ID | The only thing that distinguishes one set of black sticks from another |
| Legs make + model | Carbon versus alloy, bowl size, max height - what a producer actually needs to know |
| Head make + model | The half that travels alone; record its serial separately |
| Plate type | The question every crew asks before a shoot; saves the wrong-plate scramble |
| Payload rating | Stops a heavy camera going out on light sticks |
| Status | In use, in storage, in repair, retired - so bookings draw from reality |
| Current holder or kit | Person, job or van - who answers for it right now |
| Condition + photos | Drifting drag, stripped leg locks, missing spreader - with dates |
| Purchase date + price | Insurance, resale and the repair-or-replace decision |
If legs and head ever separate, give each its own asset record and group them as a kit; one record per pair is only honest while the pair stays together.
Kits, check-outs and van counts
Support gear stops leaking the day it starts getting signed for.
- Check out the kit, not the camera. When a shoot goes out, the sticks, head, slider and gimbal go onto the same check-out as the camera body, against a named person and a return date.
- Treat vans as locations. A van is where “missing” support gear usually is. Recording gear as checked out to a vehicle turns the black hole into an address - the heart of practical asset location tracking.
- Check plates at return. The return is the only realistic moment anyone notices a plate still attached to a camera.
- Count the vans monthly. Ten minutes per vehicle against the register catches drift while it is one tripod deep.
This is the same discipline that keeps a wider production inventory honest - the event equipment guide applies it at warehouse scale, and the video equipment guide covers the cameras the sticks support.
Wear: heads, locks and plates
Support gear rarely breaks; it degrades. Fluid heads lose smooth drag, counterbalance springs weaken, leg locks strip, gimbal motors complain. Condition notes at each return build the picture: a head with three “drag feels notchy” notes in a year is telling you something a single inspection never would. Send heads for service under their own asset ID so the repair history lands on the right record, and keep plates and clamp spares as counted stock with a reorder point - they are consumables in all but name. Retire worn kit by status change, not deletion; the record of what wore out fastest is your next purchasing guide.
Tools that make this easier
Spreadsheets fail support gear precisely because the gear is unglamorous: nobody opens a laptop to log a tripod, so the sheet records the fleet as it stood the day someone built it, and never again.
AMPthilly lowers the effort to a scan. Each set of legs, head and gimbal gets a profile with photos, serials and condition history; the QR label on the leg opens that profile in any phone browser - scan, check out, done, with no app install; check-outs can go to a person or a location - including a van or a shoot set up as a location; and the overdue list shows what never came back. The free plan covers 3 users and 25 assets, which is most of a small studio’s support stock - enough to run the system for real before spending anything.
FAQ
How do I keep track of tripods and camera support gear? Label every set of legs and every head with its own asset ID, register them with condition notes, and sign kit out to a person or job whenever it leaves.
Should tripod legs and heads be tracked as separate assets? Yes, whenever they can travel separately - heads go for service and get swapped between sticks. Group them as a kit in the register.
How do you label a tripod? Wrap-around laminated label on the flattest upper leg section, a smaller label on the head, and paint-pen or engraved marks on plates, recorded against the head.
How do I stop quick-release plates from disappearing? Make the plate part of the head’s “complete” definition, check it at every return, mark it for matching, and keep counted spares with a reorder point.
What should a camera support register include? Asset ID, legs and head make and model, plate type, payload rating, holder, status, condition notes and purchase details - plate type and payload rating get used most.
The takeaway
Support gear leaks because it is anonymous and unsigned-for. Label legs and heads separately, record the fields crews actually ask about, sign kit out to people and vans, and check the plate at every return. The fleet stops migrating the day each tripod has a name and someone answering for it.