Hi, I'm Tony Northrup and I'm in the studio today for my book Stunning Digital
Photography to talk about tripods.
Now, I have every tripod in my collection here which I count to be 11 different
tripods, plus quite a few accessories. So i'm going to go over them one by one
starting with the smallest and working my way up to the largest. So here's the
smallest class of tripod I have, this is a tabletop tripod
these are only good for supporting a very lightweight camera like a point and
shoot camera.
It's good enough if you want to use a point and shoot camera for a self-portrait
like taking a picture of your family for a christmas card, or if you wanna grab a
night shot while you're on the go.
They're exceptionally portable and they only cost a few dollars. Just about every
camera ever made has a common tripod port. They have the exact same threading
which allows you to use any tripod with any camera so you never have to worry
about compatibility issues.
There's one big oversight though and that's the most popular cameras today,
the camera phones. don't happen to have a tripod mounts up i want to show you this
accessory.
There are a few different models you can get, this particular one I found it's
really simple and it works great, it's just a clamp. And you secure it to your
camera phone and it's got two different tripod mounts, so from here I could attach
it to any tripod and it would allow me to hold my smartphone either
horizontally or vertically. Up next I have this very versatile Joby tripod.
The legs are stiff yet flexible, allowing you to wrap them around smaller things
or hang them over the edge of something. It doesn't support a lot of weight
acting as a tabletop tripod, but it's good enough for a lightweight SLR.
If you were to try to put something heavier on it would end up bending a little bit, but it's
good for what it does.
Up next I have this Eddie Bauer ultra pod, it's a very small tabletop tripod
with one really useful feature and that's this velcro strap.
This allows me to stick it to the side of something.
Of course is not going to support a lot of weight, it's really lightweight, but i
find it really useful for smaller cameras or my smartphone. Now on the top
of this
you'll notice that it has a hot shoe. This is useful for attaching a flash to.
If I'm using an off-camera flash
I can attach this to one of the legs of my tripod and then put a flash here and
trigger that flash.
Up next is this Delkin Fat Gecko. This is a suction cup based camera mount.
So what I can do with this is I can stick it to any window or basically any
flat surface. Now you see that i use this in some of my videos to attach it to the
side of my car.
I find it holds really well. Now, I don't want to take any responsibility if you
don't have the same luck, but for me it's worked great.
Up next I have this terrible Samsonite tripod.
Now, this is the first tripod i ever bought and I got it free with a camera
bag or something, and that's about what it's worth. It's not a great tripod.
It's aluminum, you can hear it creaking. So you'll notice that like most tripods, it
has collapsible legs that allow me to adjust it to different heights and it
makes it smaller
when i'm packing in a bag and I want to store it. This one goes up to about three
or four feet which means if i'm going to be using it I'd have to be crouched
down the whole time.
I want to point out a couple of features of this. You'll see that the legs
and the head are all one unit. Up next I'll show you one that's a little bit
separate. I'll also point out that this head has a stick on it and it pans from side
to side or up and down, this is called a pan tilt head and it's used primarily
for video.
Up next I have this Manfrotto MKC3H01 tripod.
This is an ultra small tripod that extends pretty far and it's got an
integrated head in it.
This is both a ball head and a pan and tilt head, it's a hybrid head. And it
allows me to either rotate anywhere including a vertical orientation for
photography, or it allows me to switch it to pan and tilt mode, to video mode, where
I can do smooth pans and tilts.
This is the first tripod with a quick release plate. A quick release plate
allows you to attach your camera to a separate piece.
You can then easily slide your camera in and out of it. I'll also show an interesting
feature of this tripod and that is that it has an adjustable tension grip.
By turning this dial here, i can adjust just how firm or loose
this is. One more feature that i want to show on this tripod is an extending
center column. Most tripods will have this feature. You can loosen that up and
then get a couple more inches maybe a foot out of your tripods height.
That allows you to get closer up to eye level but it has a big downside and that
is a lack of stability.
Once you extend that extra length you're going to find it's a little more wobbly
especially in wind. So it's okay if you're doing short exposures
but if you're doing a long exposure, for example at night, you're going to want to
do your best to not use that center column.
You can do this by choosing a tripod of an appropriate height. People recommend
having a tripod that is as tall as you are. You don't actually need that, you
can go about a foot shorter than you are because the head attached to it and the
camera attached to it
elevate the camera up quite a bit. Up next we have my travel photography
tripod. As opposed to my travel video tripod. You can see this has four legs sections
so it can collapse really tight.
These are flip locks, which are my preferred method.
Some people prefer locks that screw, I like the ones that flip, it just makes a
little easier for me to expand and collapse.
Now this tripod has a couple of great features.
First there's a... I can extend the center column here and push in a little switch
here to rotate it into a horizontal position.
This is useful if you want to get really close to the ground or if you're gonna
be holding the camera in a vertical position for a long time. So I don't use it that
often, but it's nice to know that it's there. Just like any tripod, you can
replace the head on it, so i use this joystick style tripod head when I'm in
the studio or not traveling very far.
It allows one-handed adjustments, i can just grip it and then move the ball head
to any position. I can switch the head out with a smaller lighter head though,
this is the head that I use when I travel. As you can see it basically requires
two handed operation, i have to grip it and then twist this and then
I can adjust it freely.
The extra weight makes a big difference when it's in your bag, especially when
the airline is charging you for the weight of your bags. So up next I'm going
to move over to my travel video tripod.
This is a little bit heavier tripod because you need to have your tripod for
video, it's really important that nothing moves. A couple other things make it
unique; first it's got this center column here. If I twist it like this to unlock it
I can then level the tripod head. With photography
it's ok if the shot's a little bit off kilter, it almost always is, because you
go in Lightroom and straighten it out and post,
no big deal. But in video it's really important to get it level because it's
not as easy to adjust it, things getting up getting less sharp
So you want a leveling head like that and it makes a big difference.
Second, the head attached is a pan and tilt head rather than being a ball head
that means it can't move into a vertical position easily. However when I'm filming
I can really easily and smoothly pan left and right or up and down. The next
item is not a tripod,
it's a monopod. A monopod is just a one legged tripod but it's primarily used to
help support the weight of your camera.
It's really useful when you're shooting wildlife with a big huge telephoto lens
because your arms will get tired and with the 500 millimeter lens I use, I can only
hold it up for maybe 30 seconds or so. And if you want to stalk a bird for a couple
of hours, you're gonna need something to take the weight off.
I also use this a lot in the studio. Chelsea, for example, will use it to
support the 70-200 millimeter portrait lens that we have when we are doing stock shoots.
This monopod has a couple of nice features. First, notice that the foot here
allows me to easily extend it.
All I have to do is step on that and then i can pull it up to any height that
I want. It will not go down on its own,
it's got a release here. I just need to push that in with my pinky, squeeze this
and then i can adjust it down.
Combined, those two features allow me to be easily adjust it to any height, which
is really important when you're moving around a lot.
The head i have on here is a another type of joystick head, so it allows one
handed operation.
I grip it and then I can twist it. So I have one last tripod i want to show you.
It's the biggest in my collection, so to do that I'm going to put this camera and
point it towards Chelsea so that we can have her talk about it.
I'm using a Manfrotto tripod here.
I think it's about the biggest model that they make, it's model number 475B.
It extends to be about seven and a half feet tall and its really sturdy and really
heavy, so I don't like to carry it around much.
I'm also using a Manfrotto video head.
It's really nice because it has the fluid drag system so you can pan really
smoothly
both sideways and up and down.
You can adjust the tension here with this knob. This is model number MVH 5028H.
Another thing that I really like about using this head for video is that it has
this long
quick release plate. So you can move it back and forth to balance even a heavier
camera.
This accessory here is really great, we use it to put our audio recorder on it
but you can also put an umbrella or your pc or even some notes. This video's just
meant to supplement our book, Stunning Digital Photography.
So if you'd like more in-depth information check out our gear section.
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Thanks.