Sandbags for lightstands, what's your setup?

I use regular sand bags like the blue stripe ones posted above. Water bottles etc are more problems IMHO. Same with filling sand/pebbles where you shooting. And with pegs as suggested, how do you move your stands even little?

i use 3 solid concrete bricks inside a leather bag. they hang via a rope on the top-base on the tripod, and a velcro around them to make it not wiggle.

i did this after wind dropped a bare 580ex2 on the tripod.

I too use the blue striped Amazon sourced bags available under various brand names in packs of 4. They are double zippered and actually have held up quite well. I do use sand in them but load the sand in double bagged gallon "ziploc" bags before zipping those inside the outer blue bags. I've never lost a bit of sand using this method and there is reduced friction wear on the inside of the blue nylon outer bags. That said, pea gravel is pretty smooth and probably wouldn't cause much wear to the outer bag either.

I agree 100% with Dave's #18 post above.

I have the same amazon sourced bags and fill them the same way Dave does. They seem very sturdy and I think they are a much better sand bag than the "impact bags" from B&H which cost close to $20each. The amazon sourced bags are around $6 each in packs of 4.

Whortleberry wrote in post #17255868
Here's one I made from car tyre balance weights maybe 25 years ago - weights were free so all it cost was the gas to melt them, a couple of shrink-wrapped 35mm car exhaust U-bolts (about £1 each) and an old oil can reshaped as a mould. 16lbs weight, never moves a millimetre, great in the studio, absolute pig to take on location (hence I use bottles of water on location ^insert edit here^ - drink or pour away when I've finished ).

Or pay vast amounts for the Manfrotto L-Peso (7Kg / 15½lbs) or G-Peso (4.3Kg / 9½lbs) - never did work out where the "Peso" bit came from but at a guess it's not related to the Mexican unit of currency unless the exchange rate Italy>Mexico is really messed up. I bet the carriage charges are delightful too - for a lump of iron!

Edit: The bottles of water are placed in either blue striped or yellow striped sandbags round the stand base, depending on whether I want to harmonise with my stunning blue eyes or the jaundiced areas around the irises (or whichever bags I pick up first).

Genius! Love this idea. Can I ask where you got all the old weights from?

I have the striped bags too. Since metal is much denser than gravel, I filled them with a bunch of old pennies. I think each bag holds about $25-30 of pennies.

dagwell wrote in post #17256853
I have the striped bags too. Since metal is much denser than gravel, I filled them with a bunch of old pennies. I think each bag holds about $25-30 of pennies.

Those are some expensive bags. I filled 3 bags for about $5 worth of gravel. I'd be afraid to use anything denser for fear of tearing the bags or zippers.

JacobAllison wrote in post #17256516
Genius! Love this idea. Can I ask where you got all the old weights from?

Nothing more complicated than going to my local tyre depot and asking if I could buy them. They were happy to get rid of "rubbish" because at that time, they had to pay to have this hazardous waste taken away. I haven't asked recently (no need, obviously) but I'll bet they want money for them now. Still a cheap way of getting some high density metal though. An alternative would be a scrap metal merchant; there are certainly plenty of those around my area but I don't know about Yokasuka!

Do the melting outdoors, carefully!!

Whortleberry wrote in post #17257211
Nothing more complicated than going to my local tyre depot and asking if I could buy them. They were happy to get rid of "rubbish" because at that time, they had to pay to have this hazardous waste taken away. I haven't asked recently (no need, obviously) but I'll bet they want money for them now. Still a cheap way of getting some high density metal though. An alternative would be a scrap metal merchant; there are certainly plenty of those around my area but I don't know about Yokasuka!

Do the melting outdoors, carefully!!

I figure maybe I can find some from the ship repair facility on base, and ask them to melt it up too... Everyone wants photos taken, right?

I went ahead and ordered the generic striped sand bags from amazon. These in specific. I will more than likely fill them with pea gravel that I will also put in a ziplock bag before putting in the sandbag just to be safe. A lot of great ideas in this thread thanks for the responses.

I also use pea gravel. I put this inside ziplock bags then inside school pencil bags made of nylon with a zipper opening. You can get nice durable ones at Staples or Walmart during back to school sales. Cheap DIY that looks good for about $3. Assistants and other photogs ask where I bought them.

wto203 wrote in post #17258312
I went ahead and ordered the generic striped sand bags from amazon. These in specific. I will more than likely fill them with pea gravel that I will also put in a ziplock bag before putting in the sandbag just to be safe. A lot of great ideas in this thread thanks for the responses.

Have these, work great on location shoots where I don't want to carry much. I fill them with waterbottles (if I'm using these, it's because I'm basically walking to the shoot location.)

Don't have the photo's of the set up, but I've used tent stakes with twine between them with success. The bonus is that they are a lot lighter to carry. Just drive a stake on both sides of what you want to hold down and use the twine or tent string over the legs.

This wasn't an idea of mine. I forgot my sandbags like everyone else uses, and the friend helping me suggesting the outdoor camping/gun store close by to find something. As he was wandering he asked why not use them. Obviously if you are at a spot that you can't drive something into the ground it doesn't help or probably a beach with loose sand. But for the park we were at it worked great. The heaviest thing is what you are going to use to hammer them into the ground with.

Finally got to finish my setup. I didn't realized scoping and weighing was such a pain but its done now.

Nice. I just got these through Amazon as well.