In Praise of the Tiltall
This vintage tripod belongs in the photo gear hall of fame
“Utility is one of the principal sources of beauty” – Adam Smith
When I was fresh out of college and living in Los Angeles, my cousin got a job selling Cutco knives. I bought one. A utility knife. Serrated, kinda like a steak knife. I think it was $30, which was a lot for a kid who didn’t own plates.
One day I found myself in the front yard of my rental house digging a hole to plant a shrub when my progress was halted by a tree root as thick as a swollen hallux. Being an itinerant 20-something nearly 2,000 miles from home, I had no tools but a borrowed shovel that wasn’t cutting it.
“Cutting it,” I mumbled to myself in the mildest of eureka moments.
I wanted this euonymus in the ground stat, so I ran inside to grab the only implement I owned: my new knife. The serrated edge bit right in. Progress was steady but slow. My recollection is one of profuse sweating and light cursing—or perhaps the other way around. Regardless, it took much longer than I anticipated to excavate that tree root from the front yard using a steak knife.
But eventually it did work, and the ficus carica radicle was no more. I had a rootless hole and was back to landscaping. My beautiful shrub, which the landlord would remove months later, would soon be in the ground.
Twenty-six years on and 1,822 miles away, that Cutco knife is still in my kitchen. It is indestructible, it is functional, it is unglamorous and unproblematic. It gets the job done. This is one helluva tool.
It reminds me of my Tiltall tripod.
A few years after the tree root episode, I began working for photographer Ron Barlow and took note of the simple, black anodized aluminum tripod he used. I’m sure I secretly scoffed at the rudimentary nature of the thing, since carbon fiber was the new rage and this was long before I learned the fundamental truth of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Eventually that Tiltall tripod did break, through no fault of its own, and Ron’s assistant found him a replacement. It was exactly the same in every way, but silver instead of black. Here was his chance to get a new one, I thought, something fancier and higher tech. Why did he get the same plain model instead?1
What on earth could be so special about this tripod? It certainly didn’t look like anything noteworthy. It was bland. Not a lot of bells and whistles. None, in fact. It’s kind of small and lightweight—which, if you were a copy editor you will know, is not a measure of weight but rather a term used to connote insubstantiality. This tripod is basic.
And, it turns out, that basic, unglamorous nature is exactly what Ron and countless photographers have loved for generations.
Normally I would pause here to break down the various models of Tiltall tripod throughout the years, but it’s been the same basic design since 1946. There have been a few different model numbers and subtle alterations over the years, but generally when people say “Tiltall” they mean one thing: the anodized aluminum tripod with the integrated three-way tilting head, available in black, silver or gold. It collapses down to just over 28 inches, and extends up beyond six feet tall. It’s not heavy—surprisingly light, in fact—but quite sturdy.
Another word for simple, minimal, basic: essential.
As best I can tell, the Tiltall came to prominence when it was seen in use by 20th century photography icons such as Philippe Halsman and Irving Penn. Penn, in particular, was frequently photographed with his Tiltall, and clearly appreciated its simplicity and the fact that it was a compact tripod capable of carrying more weight than one might expect.
Back when I wrote about Penn’s studio, the accompanying photograph showed his Tiltall front and center. I noticed—it’s initially what sent me down this rabbit hole—that the 1950-something model pictured looks just like the one in my studio today.
The Tiltall has maintained the same essential design and construction for 78 years, even as ownership of the brand and manufacturing have changed hands (and continents) on more than one occasion. You can buy a Tiltall today that is much the same as the 1946 version, though originalists say it doesn’t compare.
Every Superhero has an Origin Story
Born in Brooklyn in 1901, Marco Marchioni was artistically and mechanically inclined. It ran in the family. His father and uncle operated an ice cream factory and patented the Marchioni Mold—the world’s first mechanical device for manufacturing ice cream cones.
Marco went to art school and became a talented illustrator with a flair for machinery that served him well in the futurist style of the time. He worked for pulp magazines with names like Astonishing Stories and Thrilling Wonder before the war, but it was what he did in 1946 with his brother, Caesar (an amateur photographer), that would make the Marchioni name famous. They invented a light, sturdy, aluminum tripod and called it the Tiltall.2
Manufacturing began in the family garage. Soon the brothers were busy enough to need help, so they hired a handful of employees and before long were producing 5,000 tripods per year from their Rutherford, New Jersey factory.
The company’s heyday lasted nearly 30 years, until it was purchased in 1973 by Leitz, the esteemed German maker of Leica cameras.
After the Leitz sale, Tiltall ownership and manufacturing changed hands several times and the trail becomes muddled. Leitz begat Uniphot, which collapsed in the 1990s after which the Tiltall brand was rescued by then parts supplier and now owner Oliver Yang, whose Taiwan-based company (King Home) produces Tiltall tripods and Photek light modifiers.3
Somewhere in there fit a company called Davidson, maker of the Star-D Tiltall, which true fanatics will tell you is definitely—or perhaps totally the opposite—peak Tiltall.
The Keeper of the Flame
The guru of all things Tiltall is photographer Gary Regester, coincidentally the founder of Chimera and Plume and the inventor of the modern softbox. (Really!) He operates the Tiltall Tripod Support page where he offers insights, information, and parts for repairing and restoring Tiltall tripods of various vintage.
“My first Tiltall was on day one as a photo student at the ArtCenter College in Los Angeles in 1972,” he tells me. “My 35th Tiltall was just shortly before my better half suggested that maybe 40 Tiltalls would be too much. My subsequent image-making tools production all follow this minimalist Marchioni approach to tool design."
“I am not the only one drawn to simple, precise, no glamor, no fluff, no-nonsense, ‘get-to-the-point’ design,” he says. “Life is too short for anything else. And for a no-nonsense ‘get-to-the-point’ tripod, Caesar and Mark Marchioni nailed it.”
Regester is not alone. Online forums are filled with fans discussing repairs and replacement parts (all directed eventually to his website) and the pros and cons of various iterations of the Tiltall, including which era actually was the best.4 Mostly, though, the discussion always returns to the love story between photographer and tripod.
“I bought it for $39 bucks and I fell in love with it instantly! It’s a work of art. It’s simple and perfect. Smooth action for a 40-year-old tripod. I have six of them now. I can’t help myself.”
“I bought mine in Washington, DC in June, 1965. Still working like a champ! Best bargain I ever got in photo equipment.”
“Having used them since the '70s, they're very well thought out, well made of excellent materials, carry nothing superfluous, are repairable—not that I've ever had to—just a simple durable tool that does it's job and then some.”
And then there’s my favorite, which sums it up.
“Tiltall is not the best tripod you can buy, but like most great mechanical things it is a wonderful compromise. Weight, sturdiness, and cost—there are lots of tripods out there which outperform the Tiltall in any two of the categories, but when all three are considered it is in a class by itself.”
I can’t think of another piece of photographic equipment that has changed so minimally in eight decades and remains as functional—and affordable—as ever. A Hasselblad 500, perhaps? The 4x5 view camera? Tungsten hot lights? Close, sure. But all of these things have been outclassed by newer, better, and far more expensive solutions. But there’s something supremely elegant about that post-war Tiltall design that makes it as useful as ever. You could set up a budding photography business with a brand new pro digital camera and the work would not suffer one bit if you chose to pair it with a Tiltall—the brand new version for $199 or, better yet, a used one on eBay for even less.
In modern photo culture everything old is new again. Film is coming back, medium format cameras are cool again, point-and-shoots are priced to perfection… People want something that’s built to last, that just works well, even if it’s not brand new. So I say the Tiltall deserves the same reverence. Let’s bring back this most elegantly functional photography tool of them all.
Photographers who know, know. The Tiltall tripod belongs in the photography equipment Hall of Fame.
This thinking was not without precedent. When I was 8 years old, my JCPenney BMX bike with the blue tires was stolen. I had dreamed of an upgrade, something legitimately cool like a Dyno or a GT, and finally had my chance. For my next birthday, however, my parents did the sweetest, most logical thing they could have: they bought me a brand new JCPenney BMX bike with blue tires.
Frustrated by his rigid tripod’s inability to tilt the camera platform, Caesar and his brother had actually begun to design an adjustable tripod head in the 1930s. The onset of World War II limited materials so work on the product ceased. When they resumed after the war, the Marchioni’s determined they would have more success making not only the tilting head, but the entirety of the tripod as well. Thus, the Tiltall—with its easily adjustable, tilting head—was born.
Makers of another absolutely fantastically useful and affordable piece of photo gear: the Softlighter.
The most consistently-held belief seems to be that the original Marchioni version, as well as the Leitz version, used brass bushings in the leg locks, and those are superior in holding power and durability compared to the plastic parts that appeared in later iterations. How do you know which one is which? You check the badge to determine vintage and company of origin.
I bought mine used 30 years ago and at some point I cut the head off of the center column and modified it to accept any modern ballhead that uses a 3/8 mount. Not light but solid.
Ron's tripod was a workhorse of his career. We once left the studio for a location shoot, but somehow forgot his tripod. He used mine. He hated it. he switched to handholding his camera after a few clicks. His tripod was as important as his chair and camera, perhaps in that order, too. Never left it behind again.