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Announcer: Adorama TV presents Digital Photography one on 1, where we answer your questions.
Here is your host, Mark Wallace.
Mark Wallace: Hey, everybody, welcome to this week's episode of Digital Photography one
on 1. I'm Mark Wallace.
Well, this week we have a great question from Jenny Bicket Sanser. Jenny asked "I am looking
for a heavy duty, stable mini-tripod that will support my camera and that can be securely
fastened to a variety of surfaces. Does such a thing exist?"
Well, Jenny, that's a great question, and absolutely, I've got in my hand such a device.
It's called a Manfrotto Magic Arm and it has something called a Super Clamp and the Super
Clamp can be attached to almost anything. I'll be showing you how to use this and a
couple of Pocket Wizards in this special cable that I'll show you in a second, to get all
kinds of interesting shots using something I like to call "unusual point of view".
Now, unusual point of view really means that you're taking your camera and you're mounting
it somewhere where it has a point of view that's not normal, it's unusual. And it's
finding something up high or down low or to the side or outside of a car, something like
that. It's really, really neat.
And so, with the Magic Arm or with a couple of Pocket Wizards like these, and these will
work with any camera, and a special cable, now this cable is specific to a camera, we'll
be talking about that a little bit more in a little bit. You can actually trigger your
camera from a distance. So, we've got a lot to cover so let's get started.
Now, let me talk to you about some of the equipment that we're going to be using today.
This one I'm going to start out with, this is called the Super Clamp without a sturd.
Now, Super Clamps are used for all kinds of things. The nice things is that a Super Clamp
can clamp on just about anything that's round or square and it's really, really sturdy.
There's this screw that clamps this down and the thing with this guy is that it's so strong
that you can actually crush things like ladders and poles. So, you have to be sort of careful
that you don't over-tighten this but it's very, very secure.
Now this guy, actually behind us you can see that we have some seamless paper that's held
up on some auto poles. Well, that seamless paper is also held up by these Super Clamps
with some attachments on them. They also have attachments like this, this is a, it's called
a U-Hook and so it goes right in here and it's very secure and so you can stick this
on a pole and hold like background stands and all kinds of different things on this
U-Hook and this screw right here will hold that secure.
So, Super Clamps are really good for mounting all kinds of different things. So, what I've
done is, on this ladder, I've already mounted a Super Clamp to the ladder at the top rung
of the ladder and it's really nice and secure. Now, to attach to that, I'm going to use something
else.
This is called the Magic Arm, it's made by Manfrotto. In fact, the Super Clamp and the
Magic Arm are both made by Manfrotto. Now, this Magic Arm's got this little lever right
here and when I undo it, now this thing is totally loose and I can move the ins, I can
move these out. And then when I have it in position, well, I crank that, it locks into
place and it's really, really secure. So, that's the Magic Arm.
Now, the nice thing is, most of these Magic Arms come with something called a camera platform,
it looks like this and it's got a place where the Magic Arm can attach to that. So, what
I'm going to do is, I'm going to take my camera and I'm using this camera, this is a Canon
1ds mark II with a 24 to 70 mm lens, it's an L-lens.
So, this is a pretty darn heavy camera, it's about six pounds. So, I'm using this in purpose
to show you how secure this is. So, we're going to use a really heavy camera, and it's
a little bit heavier than most cameras. And then I'm just mounting this to the bottom
of my camera.
Now, this has this middle attachment right here that puts the screw in and then I can
really tighten it up with this grey disc right here. And this grey disc actually has a notch
in it, so if I want to put a screwdriver, something in there, to really tighten it down,
I can. I'm not going to do it because hand-tightening is going to get that to be tight enough for
me.
Now, the next thing I'm going to do is, I'm going to take this and I am going to attach
it to my Magic Arm. So, just put this in here like that, screw this down and so that is
nice and secure. So, now I have this attached to my Magic Arm and I'm going to take the
other end of my magic Arm and I'm going to attach it to my Super Clamp. So, it goes right
in there like that. I will adjust this so it's really nice and snug.
So, once I have that there, you can see I can put this at whatever location I want.
And when I get it, click, it's mounted. Now, the nice thing is, because this Super Clamp
can mount to just about anything, you can mount this on ladders, you can mount it on
poles. You can put it really high, you can put it really low.
So, you'll get some really interesting perspective using these Magic Arms and Super Clamps. And
what I've done is, I've set up some really cheesy flower arrangement that I grabbed here
in the studio and I'm going to be taking a picture of that flower arrangement.
Now, I could be 20 feet in the air, I'm going to climb up on the ladder here and I want
to have a vertical shot instead of a horizontal shot, so I'll loosen this. And I'll take this
around here and I'll get it all positioned exactly where I want it to go. So, I've got
that mounted up and I like that. So, now once I have it, I've locked that down, now that's
nice and secure. So, then I can just take a shot and I've got my flowers and they look
great!
Now, this isn't as secure as a tripod but normally when you have it mounted you're not
touching it too much, so you can put that on a ladder and it's going to hold really
nice and secure, a lot more secure than being handheld.
Now, let's pretend this is 20 feet in the air. Well, I don't really want to climb up
20 feet and take a picture, I want to be able to trigger this remotely and that's where
these Pocket Wizards come in. So, what I have, this is a Pocket Wizard Plus Two and what
I'm going to do with this guy, this is a transceiver, meaning that it can send and receive.
So, I'm going to turn it on, first of all, and then I'm going to mount that to my camera.
I'm just putting it in my cameras' hot shoe. And then the second thing I'm going to do
is, I'm going to use this cable right here. Now, this cable is made by Pocket Wizard and
it's called a Pre-trigger cable. Now, it's called a pre-trigger cable because of the
switch right here.
Now, the switch allows me to turn this on or off and when I turn it on, what it's doing,
it's immolating me pushing my shutter release half way, which is important if you want to
be focusing remotely. So, what I've done on my camera is, I've set my camera to continuous
focus or AI-Servo mode, so it's always focusing as along as I'm pushing my shutter release
half way down. And with the switch immolating that and as soon as I attach this, it automatically
makes my camera always focus.
So, I'm just going to attach this to my camera and this goes where the shutter release cable
would normally go. So, I'm putting that there and attaching the other end to my Pocket Wizard.
Now, when I hit the test button on my Pocket Wizard, you'll see that my camera is actually
triggering.
So, that means I can take a different Pocket Wizard, so I've got this guy here, this is
another Plus Two Pocket Wizard. When I trigger that my camera is triggering and because it's
focusing all the time, I'm always going to get something that's nice and crisp and in
focus.
Now, this is really cool because now I can mount this, let's say, to the back of a basketball
hoop or down low when there's a high jumper or to the side or outside the car or something.
You know, I can physically touch the camera to fire it, I can just shoot with my Pocket
Wizard and it will fire.
Now, here's another trick that we really like. So, I'm going to take another camera, this
is a Canon 7d and I'm going to attach this Pocket Wizard to this camera and turn the
camera on. And now, when I take a picture with this camera, that camera fires as well.
So, I'm taking the exact same shot from two totally different locations, so I can get
multiple points of view with two different cameras and control everything by myself.
So, now I'm going to take a shot of my camera and my flowers and I'll do that ... boom!
And it will show you that I have a picture of the flowers from this camera and a picture
of the flowers from that camera at the exact same time. Now, the neat thing is, since these
are Pocket Wizards, you could put one camera as a receiver or two or three or four or 20
or 100 or 500.
We can have a bunch of different cameras at a bunch of different locations and you can
trigger all of them from one location. It's very, very nice and you can all kinds of interesting
and you can get really interesting points of view.
So, there you have it! It's a couple of Pocket Wizard Plus Two's, you can use a pre-trigger
cable and then multiple cameras. Now, the pre-trigger cable, just so you know, is specific
to your camera. And so, if you have an Icon you need one that's specific to an Icon. If
you have a D3X or a D90, you need to make sure you get the right one.
You can go to the Adorama website to look and see which cable is the correct pre-trigger
cable for your camera because they're brand and camera specific. And in the Pocket Wizards,
you can use a Pocket Wizard Plus Two, you can use the Pocket Wizard many-inflicts system,
you can use the multi-max system as well, so you don't have to just use the Plus Two's,
there's a lot of options for you.
So, if you own something that is not a Plus Two, you're probably still are going to be
just fine. Well, that was a lot of fun! Jenny, thank you so much for that question. Well,
if you have a question about photography or photography related gear, remember you can
send those to me at askmark@adorama.com and we just might use it in an upcoming episode.
Well, thanks for joining me this week, I'll catch you at next week!
Announcer: This episode is brought to you by Adorama TV. Visit the Adorama Learning
Center, where you'll find photography tips and techniques, links to the gear used in
this episode and related videos.
For all the latest photography, video and computer gear visit adorama.com. And the next
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