by Stu Marks, Adventure-Crew Outdoors Editor
One of the best new gadgets that I started using in recent years is the monopod.
The Physics;
The spherical range movement possible with free handing a shot is cut down by up to 95% with the use of a monopod. With the entire gravity plane given over to the monopod, all that is left to keep still is just a very small degree of range motion available in the horizontal plane; a range that really needs some small amount of freedom for composition adjustment just prior to the shot.
The monopod is so labeled with the same naming convention as the tri-pod. Instead of three legs, it only has one.
Where the tripod is obviously more stable on its own for both still and video use, the monopod is reasonably stable enough in the hands of a reasonably experienced individual to render crisp, jiggle free, still shots at even longer distances, while requiring a much smaller piece of real estate when standing in a crowd, or moving around a lot.
Notice that I used the word “reasonably”, twice. If you are a heavy coffee drinker who just got off of a motor cycle traveling at over 100 mph while your death grip barely kept you on the bike, then grabbed a monopod and zoomed in to the furthest field of focus to capture a hummingbird in mid-flight, at dusk, will not be the best time to expect crisp, jiggle-free pictures while using a monopod.
Of course, whether or not it has the little grace legs on it is not really important. All though I enjoy having my monopod be a temporary tripod for the purpose of arm and hand fatigue, recently a fellow photographer told me that he didn’t ever plan on taking his hand off of his camera while it was attached to a monopod. I suppose that’s a thousand dollar mistake waiting to happen, so I suppose that agree with him to a greater degree.
Certainly those little grace legs were not designed for providing a steady shooting platform. The engineering and weight balance are all wrong. I certainly don’t use them while shooting, preferring them Velcroed together out of the way.
If you are gearing up to go out and deliberately capture the long distance hummingbird shot at dusk, then the monopod is not your platform for this shot. Get a nice, heavy, garden variety Bogen tripod for that shot.
My favorite use for the monopod is outdoors sports shooting.
At the annual Midwest Christian Boys’ Football Camp in Central Illinois (the largest full contact football camp in the US, according to the Ridel Corp) for who I am the action and texture photographer. For portraits, they use a local studio photographer who comes out and shoots the team pics. But, for the fun stuff, they use me.
On the sidelines during games, I hop around in tandem with the chain gang and capture really awesome shots with the monopod.
CLICK ON THE PIC FOR A FULL VIEW. From the recent article on photo gadgets by Stu Marks, this photo shows the steadiness of a monopod in a series of three shots captured on a speed burst using a Cannon Digital Rebel. Green 22 hands the ball off to Green 38, successfully misleading Burgundy 47 who learns too late that Green 22 no longer has the ball. Notice that there is no blur caused by hand jiggle or any other camera movement while I just held down the firing trigger to capture three shots during the hand-off. All I had to do was simply keep the shot centered and level. The monopod is more than sufficient for outdoor sports shots and any other like profile shooting where a fast shutter and plenty of light are the rule.
Monopods come with different bells and whistles. Mine pretty much had every extra available but still was under $75.
I suggest shopping for one online or at a retail store from which there are several to choose. Probably the best thing to do is research about them on line and then go look at some at a Ritz/Wolf, or some other store that specializes in photographic and video gear.