Favorite Things: The Magic Stick

I can teach you how to improve your pictures with one simple piece of advice. Get a monopod and use it. A monopod is one of my very favorite things. These days, a good many expensive lenses are equipped with VR, or “vibration reduction” and/or “image stabilization”. But, you can add VR to any lowly, non-equipped lens or camera by simply learning to shoot off of a monopod!

I figured this knowledge was a given, until recently when an aspiring shutterbug with a new camera asked me how to get sharper pictures. I advised she get a monopod and she said, “I don’t know what that is.”

Well, think of it as a telescopic hiking staff with a male thread on the top that you can secure your camera onto. A monopod doesn’t quite go as far as a tripod in the job description department, but it is multi-functional, and very helpful when shooting in lower light, at slower shutter speeds, with longer (telephoto) lenses, and macro (close up) lenses. Folks may think that something like a monopod is for more professional shooting, but interestingly, the opposite is possibly true. Since full featured DSLR cameras have more options to improve success, point and shoots are a perfect candidate for some extra help.

Let’s consider, for instance, a pocket-sized point and shoot, no bigger than a cell phone. Such cameras typically have no optical viewfinder, so you can’t “brace” the camera against your brow and triangulate your arms to stabilize the shot. Instead, such cameras have an LCD screen on the back, which requires that you hold the camera out from your body to frame the shot … (and if you’re old like me your arms are hardly long enough, even with glasses). This is problematic because there you are, floating the camera around in front of you, and worse, when you punch down the shutter, the camera tends to yaw to the right slightly. If you are in lower light or at a slower shutter speed, more often than not, your image will not be sharp. The nature of how you shot it will introduce camera shake.

However, mount that camera on a monopod and take the same shot and you should see a dramatic improvement. (Of course, you must strive to keep the camera as still as possible throughout the shooting; you want to always squeeze the shutter gently and keep the rig still. And, if your subject matter is moving, you will still get a blurry subject.)

A monopod is always part of my gear. I have a couple of them, and for each one I've also added an appropriate ball head. Of course, if you screw the monopod directly into the bottom female thread of your camera (see image above right), your camera will always be in a landscape composition when the monopod’s foot is on the ground. A ball head allows you to rotate the camera to vertical position.

The greatest news is that for those of you who are point and shoot users with small or light weight cameras, all you really need is a basic, inexpensive monopod. Targas offers such a rig available at your local Wal-mart for $15 to $20. To top it off, Giottos (a favorite company of mine) makes a Professional Mini Ball Head Camera Mount (Giottos MH1004) of very high quality for $12.99 … free shipping from a variety of vendors on Amazon. For little hikes with the dogs when I’m carrying a pocket camera or my P90, this is all the stick I need in the field or indoors under lower light.

Usually, I carry my Nikon DSLR with an 18-200 lens, and it’s heavy. (Below left: with a 70-300 zoom lens, SB-600 speed light and Gary Fong Diffuser ... five pounds of camera!) My feather weight Targas monopod and tiny ball head are not enough to handle such weight, and so, I use a much heavier duty monopod (Giottos MM9780) with a beefier ball head (Giottos MH1002). I dearly love this combination.

This telescopic 5 section pod acts as a really wonderful hiking staff (while carrying the camera separately, of course) and is always at the ready to come to the aid of my image capturing, whether sitting low to the ground or at a full stand. The ball head has enough of a tightening knob that you can really torque it down, and it will hold the weight of a full DSLR (with most lenses) in place securely. I don’t mean to be redundant, but I have to state again: I don’t just use it outdoors. It’s essential gear for me when shooting indoors, too. Especially concert and theatrical events, but for general candid work as well.

One final thought, a good monopod is also worth its weight in gold for video shooting, and because you are always in landscape position, you don’t need the ball head! Of course, most digital still cameras also offer video these days, but virtually all dedicated video cameras, even pocket sized models like the Flip, are threaded for a tripod / monopod. My recommendation, not surprisingly, is to get a good one and make it part of your shooting regimen whenever possible. You’ll be taking better pictures in a flash. No pun intended.