Hanging Weight for Sturdiness

If you’re out there shooting and it gets really windy, you’re going to want some extra stability, and that’s why many tripods have a hook at the bottom of the center column. That hook is for hanging extra weight, which not only helps keep your tripod stable, it helps keep it from blowing over (once you’ve seen a few tripods with cameras on them go crashing over, it changes how seriously you take this “adding weight” idea). Rather than taking a sandbag with you (by the way, when you buy a sandbag they, generally, don’t come with sand inside, so it’s easier to take a sandbag with you than you’d think—they just fold right up and slide into the outer pocket of your camera bag. You add the sand on-site, since sand is pretty ubiquitous), a lot of photographers just hang their camera bags from that center pole. So far, I haven’t seen one tip over with a camera bag hanging from it, but think of it this way: if you put a sandbag on it, and it tips over, the last thing you’ll be worrying about is the sandbag.