July 09, 2003
Monopods
I told Stas he should get a tripod for his digital camera. It will make his macro photography even better than it already is. In conversation, the subject of monopods came up, and both RogerDoubleYou and Stas asked how a monopod is used and what it's good for. (And when I held it like Moses, was the camera body actually higher than my head?)
For street photography applications, the utility of a monopod is greater than one third the utility of a tripod. In fact, it probably approaches two thirds in some situations.
Unextended monopod
Extended monopod
Ballhead pivot mounts to top of monopod. Camera, bolted to the gray metal plate, solidly clicks into the ballhead
How do I use it? For example, I am in the Tsujiki fish market in Tokyo. The light level is incredibly poor and I'm using a 100-400mm telephoto lens. The monopod immediately removes the Z vector from my shaky hands. In fact, it has a dampening effect on the X and Y vectors as well. If I concentrate hard, my two legs and the monopod make a pretty convincing tripod. If I am clever and climb halfway up the staircase in the middle of the market, I can wedge the monopod leg up against the wall of the staircase, pinning it with my leg, and I get a more stable platform. The result? I was shooting 400mm at 1/6, 1/10 shutter speed (way way slower than the minimum recommendation of 1/lens-length)) and the combination of monopod and the lens' image stabilizer was producing acceptably sharp images.
At the Finke Desert Race, only partially extended, sitting on the hood of my Land Cruiser
How else have I used it? Since it has a ball head (I'm glad I bought a ballhead instead of the traditional three-lever, three-axis deals), I could tighten it down only mildly, and have a really smooth, stable base with which to pan all the race cars blasting by on the Finke desert race.
It's a lot easier to be dashing around a crowd, around a race track, over 400lb frozen tuna with a monopod than it is with my big, heavy tripod. It's also probably slightly less conspicuous in a crowd of unfriendly Japanese fish traders than a tripod.
In selecting your N-pod, make sure you get one that has levers to lock the sliding legs in place, not thumbscrews. The thumbscrews on my Manfrotto Tripod are 1) a nuisance that slows me down a LOT 2) tend to get some oxidation or corrosion which makes them stiff.
As I said earlier, I'd get a ballhead. It's easier to work with.
Posted by Nils Blutig at July 9, 2003 02:09 PM | TrackBack