Basic Training: Breaking it Down

Kyle Cassidy
March 2008

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"Geez," sighed Larry after the DVD was over, "how come my video never looks like that?" The words "talentless hack" danced through my head, but that wasn't really helpful.

"One reason might be that you never use a tripod," I said

"Why on earth would I want to use a tripod? I move the camcorder all the time!"

This was true. Larry likes to videotape auto races, so you get half an hour of a car going around in a circle.

"Tripods aren't just for static shots," I said. "There's much more to using a tripod than sticking a camcorder on one in the back of a room and leaving it there."

"Really?"

"Absolutely."

"Whenever I've tried to use a tripod, I've found it really awkward to move - all those knobs to twist and things like that - and I can never tell what direction it's supposed to go in...."

"Well, Larry," I said, "let's talk about tripods then."

A tripod has two distinct parts - the legs and the head. In most professional tripods, these are interchangeable components rather than a monolithic unit like you'll find on less expensive ones.

The legs are usually telescoping tubes or crutch-style which can lock extended; these raise the camcorder off the ground. Typically they're categorized by the amount of weight they can hold steady. These can be made of wood, aluminum or carbon fiber.

Some models, at both the high and low ends of the price scale, connect the legs to the center post or by a spreader at the base of the legs. Many mid-range tripods have legs that move independently of one another.

The head is the device which holds the camcorder. The head, more often than not, has a "quick release," which is a plate that screws into the bottom of your camcorder using a 1/4-inch screw. The plate then attaches to the tripod head by means of a quick-release lever. Some people leave the quick release more or less permanently mounted to the camcorder. This allows you to attach and remove the camcorder from the tripod quickly - very useful if you frequently mix tripod and handheld shooting.

Tripod heads come in several flavors. The most common and inexpensive, but not the most useful for video, are the three-way tilt-pan heads. These have three levers for controlling up, down, left and right motion, as well as for canting the camcorder to one side (for taking portrait-style photos with a still camera). Another popular choice is the ball head, which is much easier to use. It allows the camcorder to move through its range of motion attached to a ball and sometimes has a pistol grip. These two heads, while common, are useful mainly in still photography. When a tripod needs to do double duty with family videos and still photography, one of these is a good choice.

The third choice is the fluid head tripod, which is very popular for use with video camcorders. Real ones, called "true fluid", actually have oil in a sealed chamber through which the mechanism of the tripod moves. There are some cheaper faux fluid heads that just use friction to achieve a similar goal. The drag of the mechanism through the oil on a true fluid head produces a slow, steady movement for tilting and panning shots. Good tripods will allow you to set the tilt or pan drag independently. Some really good tripods have digital readouts to set extremely precise drag. Tripods specifically designed for video typically have one control arm (rather than three), allowing you to do a range of tilt and pan motions with one control.

Also popular with video are tripods which put some of the camcorder's controls (pause, play and zoom) on the pan-arm, allowing you to keep an eye to the viewfinder and control the motion and function of the camcorder with one hand. These LANC controllers (also known as Control-L) are especially useful for studio and event videographers. Check to see if you can hook one up to your camcorder before you plop money down for an attachable controller.

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