A small telescope set up on a camera tripod is, in effect, on an altazimuth mounting. A sturdy camera tripod may be perfectly adequate for a spotting scope. Many small commercial refracting telescopes are sold with altazimuth mounts. When you have an object in your field of view, it will move out of the field due to the rotation of the Earth. To reposition your telescope on the object, you have to move the telescope to the right and slightly up or down.
Many altazimuth mounts come with slow-motion controls and cables for hand operation.
This allows you to more easily follow objects in the sky by use of the manual slow-motion feature. A big limitation of this type of mounting, however, is that it is very awkward to use when objects are high overhead near the zenith. In fact, many altazimuth mountings are limited by designs that prevent you from pointing the telescope directly up toward the zenith. Dobsonian The Dobsonian mountings used on many large telescopes are just another version of the altazimuth. Their main advantages are low cost, ease of construction, light weight, and good stability.