Hi.
This is Jay P Morgan.
Today on The Slanted Lens we're out here at Hannington beach taking pictures of surfers.
The reason we're doing this is to test our new tripod here from Vanguard.
This is a Vanguard-263.
It's the Alta Pro 263 and it's got a GH-300T ball head on it.
I love these things when I'm shooting anything that's in a motion kind of situation.
These kind of grip handles are fabulous.
I've used them a lot from the very early days when they came out.
I just find them really effective and just easy to shoot while on set especially if I'm
gonna start dropping my camera like this and moving.
It just gives me so much flexibility to kind of frame my frame, get my shot and just move
on to the next shot really quickly.
So I'm back button focusing and them I'm firing the camera from the trigger here on the handle
of the ball head.
This is just a really nice setup.
I can put different tensions on it here depending on how loose I want this to roll with the
tension knob.
And then if I want I can just simply lock this down.
I can lock the tripod off and it's not going anywhere.
So I've got the locking mechanism and/or the friction, which the friction is really the
way I use it for what we're doing today because we're shooting surfers.
It's moving very quickly.
I'm trying to follow the focus and shoot, and this just gives me the ability on a 600-millimeter
lens to keep that lens stabilized on the tripod and the head set up, but also to give me the
flexibility to follow the action, set my focus with that back button focusing, and then fire
away with the trigger on the handle.
It's a great setup for working out in this kind of a situation.
This comes both in Nikon and in Canon so you can hook this up to your Canon or your Nikon
camera, so it'll just automatically trigger from the camera, from the ball head.
So there's a locking mechanism here on the collar that allows you to set this pistol
grip at whatever angle you want.
So if you're working down like this and you don't want that your arm to be turned, just
simply turn it, click on the next spot, and now you can work with it in that...whatever
way you wanna set it that's gonna be comfortable for your hand.
Just has multiple places you can move this thing all the way up.
If you like this better...if this works for you, you can do it.
I've got this setup on manual.
On manual, I'll shoot a one-two thousandth of a second for my shutter speed, I'll be
an F9 for my aperture because I've got a teleconverter on my 150-millimeter to 600-millimeter lens
and that teleconverter is going to require me now to go to F9 because that's gonna be
the fastest this lens setup is with that teleconverter.
But that's okay because I'm in a very bright, open sunlight situation or open cloud here.
A lot of times on the stuff I shot at the horse racing I would go to an auto ISO, I
won't do that here because the auto ISO is gonna wanna take all this white and make it
like a mid-tone grey which is gonna just be too muddy and too dark.
So I'm gonna set the ISO on my own.
I'm just gonna have to watch the ISO and follow it.
Right now I'm about 2500 ISO but that's been kinda the extreme.
When the sun comes out a little bit I'm about at 800 ISO which is really where I'd like
to be.
I'd like to be at 800 ISO.
It's hard for me to feel like I'm gonna get good images if I go much slower than 2000.
I could go down to 12,000...I could go down to 1250 and still get a pretty decent image.
I may do that to bring this ISO up a little bit because it's gotten a little bit darker.
Tip about exposure, just know that your meter is gonna wanna make this 18% great when you
got this whole white thing so you're gonna have to over-expose it just slightly.
So if your meter says it's good at standard you're probably gonna need to give it two-thirds
of a stop to stop to be able to make that look right.
So just look at that, look on the back of your camera, make sure it's feeling right.
But just know that there's all this white surf is probably gonna fool your meter just
a little bit and make it too dark.
But surfs kinda breaking up right now.
It's almost finished so we're just about done for the day.
Whatever the surfs breaking up means?
I mean, I act like I know what I'm doing out here.
Sure, the surf's breaking up.
Yeah, the surf's breaking up, breaking up, yeah, it's kinda breaking up, that's what
I'm thinking, breaking right up there.
Time to go have breakfast.
But anyway, I keep this on my backpack all the time.
This is a BlackRapid Backpack Strap.
So take off one side, hook it down the bottom of your belt and now I've got a strap to be
able to use my camera and let my camera drop right here where I wanna use it.
It's really a great little addition to my backpack.
And I keep this just on each backpack so I have it, and it's available when I go to shoot.
Look at that, our case has got sand all over it.
I'm gonna have to wash it off.
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We've got a Rebel T4i in here.
Let's see if it's still dry inside this case.
Except for the drips I just got on it when I opened it, absolutely dry.
Camera's safe and ready to go.
So I've really enjoyed shooting on this.
It's actually worked extremely well.
You got the GH-300T, that's the ball head.
It has that friction head to be able to use it in the shoot.
On the carbon fiber just light sticks to make it easy to haul this around.
This set up worked out flawlessly for what we were doing.
Triggering from here worked out extremely well because I'm focusing and focusing with
my right thumb, and I'm just firing away with my left hand.
Just made it so I could shoot a lot faster and a lot more images that way.
This really is an action set up, but it works extremely well in the studio when you've got
a fashion kind of thing, somebody's moving a lot, just a nice set up to be able to follow
actions and be able to make things happen.
So there's a look at the Alta Pro 263 and the GH-300T.
A great combination for your tripod for any kind of action situation from fashion to surfing,
just a great set up.
So keep those cameras rolling, keep on clicking.
If you love stop motion, you want to learn how to do it?
Get on to theslantedlens.com.
Go to our store, we've got a great download there from Trisha Zemp, a beginning download
that will teach you the basics of stop motion and an advanced download that will help move
your work to a professional level.
Or you can bundle the two together at a greatly reduced cost.
So get over to theslantedlens.com.
Go to the store.
Get your stop motion download.
But this dude decides he's gotta dig a big hole in the sand right in front of where we're
shooting.
There isn't anybody on the rest of this entire beach.
Living in L.A, you gotta love it.
Make sure you subscribe to "The Slanted Lens" so bullies don't kick sand in our face, or
our ear, or our nose.
So subscribe to "The Slanted Lens."