This right here has been my main camera set up for quite a while.
It's a big beefy tripod with the Sony FX3 on it, and then I have an
iFootage support rod mounted to the side of it, which is super handy.
It just goes on with one of these little quick release things right
here, and then I can run the audio from my MKH 50 directly into the camera.
And everything is kind of good to go in this self-contained little tripod unit
right here, and my favorite part is that when I have the microphone positioned
how I need it, I can then move the camera and the mic will move with the camera.
So it never goes into the frame once you have it positioned how you want it.
And that has been really, really great.
The problem with tripods, believe it or not, is that they have three legs.
And so this is what I've been dealing with.
When I have the camera in the spot where it's located most often the legs just
get in the way of everything, and it totally blocks my access to gear and power
cables, and it just becomes a huge hassle.
And I may or may not have injured myself on more than one occasion trying to
maneuver my way around this tripod.
And I love having this big beefy tripod because this, the camera and the mic, it's
not super heavy, but it's kind of heavy.
But sometimes it's fun to work with big heavy cameras like this, and
having a heavy duty tripod means that your camera's not going to fall and
break into a bunch of pieces of duty because it fell off of a weak tripod.
But I know you might be saying, "If you're only doing that sometimes while
using the big tripod all the time, couldn't you just use a small regular
tripod and it would take up less space?"
Look how much less heavy duty this little travel tripod is than this tripod.
But once I have this extended so that it's at the proper height, not quite as big,
but it's still a hassle to even have a more simple tripod like this in my setup.
And so I tried to solve that problem, and I know sometimes you might
say, "Hey, solutions to problems like this don't grow on trees."
But I found the Falcam Geartree and I set it up because it just clamps to the desk
and then I can mount my camera, my audio, and even other stuff just on this one
thing and there's nothing on the floor.
And once I had that set up...
it was terrible.
It did not work for me at all.
I do know lots of people have had good luck with the Geartree, but it did not
work for me, so I chopped that tree down and sent it back to where it came from.
But then I did find a much more affordable and simple solution to this
problem of needing a strong camera support that takes up less space.
And that would be this guy right here, which you might say, "Oh
dang, I can't even see that.
It's so low in the frame!"
That's right, because this is literally called "The Lowboy,"
so say ahoy to the Lowboy.
Rolling stands like this are nothing super new.
This one though is just lower, so this is the maximum height that it extends
to, but I honestly don't need it at this.
I need it to be at eye level.
But the cool part, as you can kind of see, it is rock solid
steady, just like this tripod is.
But instead of having three legs that come out and take a lot of space, you
just have three support legs down here, and it's so much easier to walk around
and maneuver around something like this
than something like this if you're in a tight spot.
Plus the whole thing is on wheels so it becomes very easy to then move
it around and get it out of the way.
This, especially when you have cables and stuff connected to your
camera, it becomes quite a thing to move a big heavy tripod around.
Even if you just need to move it
like just a few inches.
It sometimes is annoying, whereas this just has wonderful wonderful wheels.
I wheely like the wheels.
Now the tricky thing with the Lowboy is it's not really intended for cameras.
It's kind of like a C stand in that it can be used for almost
anything, but out of the box
it does not really come set up in a way that will work with cameras.
Lights are the most common things that these are used for and my big
key light right here is actually on a taller Impact rolling stand.
I put parts of my C stand on so that way I can still roll it around
and that goes much higher and I can boom it out of frame and everything.
This one does have this little thing that pops up right here.
It's like a little light stand.
I can open that up.
But unfortunately that doesn't work because as you can kind of
see, it's still a little loose.
It's totally fine for a light like a light isn't going to
fall, it's not going to fall off.
But a camera will start wobbling a little bit, and as you can kind of
see too, it's not perfectly straight.
So that means that your shot is going to be a little bit crooked.
So instead of using this really cool built-in thing, which would've been
nice to use, I had to get this adapter right here, which is a junior to baby
pin adapter, and definitely does not go.
By any other nicknames at all.
It is only known as a junior to baby pin adapter, butt what I'm able to
do is then pop that right in here.
And now we have a much sturdier baby pin that's not going to go anywhere.
And it's also perfectly vertical.
It's not leaning to one side or the other, but you still can't mount a
tripod head or a camera directly to this.
So this was the next solution to that problem, this is a Kupo something or other
adapter, but the baby pin goes in here.
And then up here you have a three eights inch mount that then will go
right into the bottom of a tripod.
So now I can take this, pop it on here, and now I'm ready to mount a
tripod head onto this Lowboy stand.
So I did need two adapters to make that happen, and this will work with
any tripod head, but since I want it to be heavy duty, I'm just going
to use this head here that came with this Manfrotto tripod, because it's
a really, really nice tripod head.
Now depending on the tripod head you're using, it's going to add a different
amount of height to this stand because you have the Kupo adapter and the tripod head.
In my case, this is, I don't know, eight or nine inches of height
that it's adding to this stand on top of this baby pin adapter here.
So now this what was a very, very low stand is still a
just a pretty low stand, but it's, it's still outstanding.
It's just not as low as befo.
So now I can mount my mic boom on there.
I can attach my camera.
And now I've got all the benefits of my all-in-one camera setup
that I had with this big tripod except, It's not on the big tripod.
It is just on this one small rolling stand, which is very
easy to then stand around.
And if I don't need it, then I can just wheel it out of the way and it totally,
it just takes up so much less space than having a whole tripod like this.
I'm not going to get rid of this tripod because it's super amazing.
It's super sturdy, and if you do a lot of video production stuff, having a
really solid tripod is really important.
But for my studio space and studio setups, this is what I've been
using for the past few months and it has been an absolute game changer.
And speaking of game changers, thank you to everyone who helps
support my channel through Patreon and YouTube Channel Memberships.
You really did change the game for me...
anyway.
And also if you want to know more about really cool stands, check out the video
I made a while ago on C stands so you can see and understand how awesome they are.