Monopod time and questions

[BillM]

Here is the difference between a $50 monopod and a $80 monopod. Which one would you rather attach 10K worth of gear to ? And don't kid yourself, once you get started down this path you will end up with an 8 pound lens too LOL

Sorry for the crappy p&s shot.


And I tried a tilt head for sports, waste of money. The experts got this one right, don't bother.

 

[dannylightning]

I used a cheap video tripod i have laying around for a mono pod the other day, I only extended one leg of the tripod and left it folded up, This was just a quick test to see how I liked using a mono pod. I think I might pick one up when spring rolls around.

I wold want a head on the monopod, with the head on the tripod locked in place I am not sure if I like it. when the head on the tripod was able to move with the camera it was allot easier for when you needed to tilt the camera up or down. If I was just paining to the left and right. it did not matter if the head was locked because the mono pod just rotated with the camera when panning left and right. but if you wanted to tilt the camera up or down with the head locked you actually had to lean the whole thing forward or backward and that was not exactly great.

 

[astroNikon]

Yeah, if you are doing sports or anything that moves, having a head on it .. well, when are you going to adjust it ? before the person gets into the endzone or after .. or between?

It's easier just to tilt to one side or the other or forwards or backwards. There's your moveable head.

I have a nice Carbon Fiber one ... nice and light and strong Silk Pro 381 or something. I had a head for it .. but in sports you just move around. I originally had the same concepts when I tried one of my old tripods as a monopod. BUt a real monopod is just different.

 

[dannylightning]

Since someone disagreed with what I said. think about this. your out at a park shooting with your monopod, there is a bird flying up the sky way above you and you want to get it. Or your at a football game and you are down around the same level as the field. the kicker kicks the foot ball way up high and you want to get a photo of the ball flying thew the sky,

think about how much your going to have to tilt the mono pod back to get the camera at the right angle to get either of those photos if it does not have a adjustable head on it.

 

[BillM]

We are talking about sports photography, not birds. Just because you have a camera on a stick it doesn't mean that stick is stuck in the ground. If you decide to start shooting sports let me know and I will send you a tilt head to try, after a few minutes you will tighten that puppy up as hard as you can, especially if you have some heavy glass on it

The action tends to happen at field level

 

[snowbear]

My universal lens and monopod | Photography Forum



<wink>

 

[BillM]

The ULTIMATE tilthead

 

[bratkinson]

I'm probably the oddball here...a relatively cheap Polaroid brand (are they still in business?) carbon fiber 5-section monopod with a Kirk BH-3 ballhead and clamp to support my gripped 5Diii and lens and flash attached.

Why a ballhead? Because a monopod bracket only tilts in one plane - left-or-right. That requires that the monopod itself be leaned forward or backward slightly to vertically aim the camera where you want it. While I doubt I'd ever want to aim the camera upward at 30 degrees while on a monopod, but with a monopod bracket, the monopod itself would be rendered useless at a 30 degree angle to the floor. With a ballhead, I can be in any position comfortable to me, standing or sitting, and even with the monopod angled slightly for whatever reason, I have full control of where to aim the camera. It should not that I don't tighten the ballhead too tight. It's just tight enough to allow movement without being 'loose'.

And should the situation ever arise, the 2 or 3 pound ballhead at the end of 24" or so monopod would make one heck of a weapon! 5Diii optional.

 

[BillM]

And you are using that setup to shoot sports ?

 

[bratkinson]

And you are using that setup to shoot sports ?

I use the monopod when I need to do low light, slow shutter work at church events (I don't do weddings). As always, with slow shutter speeds in the 1/30th range, the keeper rate gets really bad due to subject movement, and that's a slow walk, etc.

As for sports, whether sitting in the stands with a long lens or along the sidelines, I'd expect a monopod to go a long way towards avoiding neck and shoulder pain from having a significant weight on them. Just carrying around about 5-6 pounds of camera attached to me with a wrist strap doing street photography gets my right shoulder sore too quickly these days.