2026-09-08 Collecting & Falca / IIC tripods

 This is a real mishmash of a story with no clear theme. This has also been a confusing week of collecting. It started with finally managing to acquire a camera I had my eye on for two or three weeks. I feasted on trying to get the shutter working, cleaning it up and learning all I could about how it works.
    I  was reasonably saturated with that and still had a second project—purchased at the same time—in hand, when an opportunity to buy a couple of cameras at an auction suddenly came up. This hasn’t happened to me before, so I spent a couple of days agonizing about taking advantage of the opportunity. The up side was the prices seem reasonable. The downside was the items had to be picked up 60-kilometers away in a six hour window on Saturday. I decided to be strong and just pass on the chance to acquire a Minox and Mamiya 16 Automatic for around $30.
    So the next day I went to my local thrift store, hoping for a reward for showing strength to resist my collecting demons. Imagine my surprise when a thrift store friend presented me with two tripods he wanted to give me because I had brought him something the week before. He collects old toys and I had brought him a Ghetto Blaster Transformer. 
    I have become a standing joke at the Edmonton Photographic Historical Society for collecting tripods. It is no joke at home, as my wife hates them. Tripods are large, ungainly articles that very few photographers need more than one of. On the other hand any commercial photographer—or photographic collector—requires different size and weights of tripods.
    This finally brings us to the subject of this article. The fun a collector can extract from two very similar items.
    

    The first fun comes in evaluating what you have received. I had a Taiwan made IIC tripod and a Japanese made Falca tripod in a carrying bag. The IIC was painted black castings and aluminum tubing with some chrome highlights, while the Falca was blue painted casting and aluminum tubing. 

  

 The initial damage assessment had the IIC with a broken compression lock on one leg section. The previous owner had simply locked all three of the lower leg’s locks with electrician black tape so you only have the longest of the sections left for gaining height. I tried peeling off the tape and found the problem is a cracked compression fitting I can’t repair. So be it.

The Falca had been broken at one of the leg locks too. But in this case—since it was a simple thumbscrew—it had been very well repaired (its the upper left lock). The other thing missing was one of the tripod’s feet. I found a plastic car “plug” I could shave down and replaced the missing part (the tip closest to you).
    

Then the really strange stuff started to come up. I had decided to use one tripod while shooting the other but suddenly found the Falca won’t tilt to straight down. I found it can tilt completely back, so I could take photographs by reversing the camera on the platform. But then you have the tilt handle pointing in front of the camera, which makes tightening it kind of a challenge.
    I’d write off the strangeness if that is all that happened, but then the IIC—when it was its turn—suddenly wouldn’t pan. “What the heck?” was the nicest thing I said. Seems the IIC’s ball has been so maltreated that the pan lock has to be really backed off to get the pan to work. But it will work, you just have to learn its tricks.
    You probably haven’t wondered how I managed to get a high angle shot using a tripod that can only extend to the height of a table. I’ll confess I used a chair. You can stand tripods on chairs—or for that matter I could have stood the tripod on the same table as the subject. You work with what you have…

Both tripods have the same—

• twin screw arrangement to attach cameras
• pull up center column’s, with keyways to keep the head orientation
• feet tips

Head pads

Leg tubing

Roughly same height, even with center columns extended

Stops to keep column from coming completely out. The stop—which has a second tripod screw—unscrews

On the Falca the stop is a C-ring—so removable with the right tool.

The tripods have their differences—

• the IIC hub tension is completely loose on two legs—the legs just flop open

• 
  the Falca has tension at the hub holding the leg angle—so you can pick up and move the tripod easily

• the IIC has a rubber washer to keep the legs from rubbing on the center column as well as cushioning the stop when pulling the column all the way up.
• 
  
  The way the two tripods handle the pan/tilt function is the same. They both use a handle/lock for the tilting and a single lock for the pan. But how they mechanically do that job is different.
• 
  
  The IIC has a really short solid tube that attaches to the center column at the bottom and has a ball on the top. That ball sits inside a side-to-side casting that is straddled by the attachment for the camera. The lock on the left side locks in place the center “T” that straddles the ball to stop all pan motion. Meanwhile the tilt handle can separately loosen/lock the tilt action. The two actions are independent of each other.
• 
  
  The Falca head takes a different approach. There is a collar around the top of the column that has its own lock for the pan action. Mounted on the side of the collar is a front and back casting that has the camera platform moulded into it. That whole assembly is separately locked by the tilt handle. Again pan and tilt are separate actions with separate locks. 
  

For size comparison here are the two tripods with a 1954 Kodak Retina IIIc.
Top the IIC, bottom the Falca.

The two together again, except the Falca is in its tote bag.
If I had to throw or give one of the two tripods away I would probably stay with the Falca. It has an unusual design for its knobs, and the leg locks are very robust (and apparently repairable!). But since I don’t have to give or throw anything away I’ll just add the two tripods to the forest of tripods. Having spent almost a day cleaning them, trying to research them, taking images of them, using them and finally writing about them—at no cost—I feel they are part of my collecting hobby’s many benefits.