[Music] 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 time you're in New York City, visit our store
located on 18th Street between 5th and 6th Avenue..
No comments:
Post a Comment