From the course: Video Gear

Using a micro tripod

From the course: Video Gear

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Using a micro tripod

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- Some people collect cars. Other people collect stamps or coins. Mr. Rich Harrington collect tripods. - In fact, if you make tripods and you want to send more, I would not complain. - Well Rich, one of the tripod collections that I love of yours is the so-called mini or micro tripods. Tell us a little more about these. - Well in this case you've got something that is going to provide a stable platform. There are so many different options out there. But here's some of the things I look for. This one here is from Manfrotto. It's a simple ball head which is nice. - Yeah. That's actually a cool, unique design on the ball head. It's actually just a button that you push in. - Yeah. - And then you can position the head anywhere you need to. - And that works well. We've got others here. This one is from Fotodiox. What's interesting is there's some mount points. It creates it again. Now this is the most robust one I've seen. You're holding one there with a full Really Right Stuff professional head that's designed for your typical arca swiss style mount plate. I've also just swapped with a GoPro head. Look how flat that goes Rob. Open it up. - Yeah. It goes all the way flat and the other thing that you'll notice about it is that compared to something even like the Manfrotto, which is also a professional level tripod, there's quite a bit of heft to this. That's partly because of the actual ball head, but the legs themselves are nice and stable and metal. And again, going really flat. I mean you can almost get to perfectly flat just like you would have the camera on the ground itself. And the cool thing about these Rich too - Yeah. - Is that if you're doing a lot of changeovers and different setups, guess what I can do? I can just throw these in my pocket. - Yup. - I can pull them out whenever I need them. - I was thinking he was trying to rip me off there so I was counting how many he had in his hands. What do you mean I had four tripods? - Well in all seriousness. We joke about you know sometimes about people who wear those big photo vests with all the millions of pockets. You know what? That's a great use for these things. I've travelled with people that have had a couple different tripods in their pocket and I'm searching for my big tripod, taking it out. - Yeah. - And they're already set up. - Yeah. These are fantastic for that. And with a standard thread mount you can go with a GoPro mount. You can go with a ball head. These are incredibly flexible and I don't know, what do you think that weighs? - I don't know. Maybe six to eight ounces, somewhere in that range. - Nothing. Put one of these in your bag and you've always got a stable surface to shoot from.

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