Tripod? Monopod? Gorillapod? Baffled? Read on!

Whether or not to use a tripod is one of those questions I’m asked before several of my workshops – I suspect because people would prefer not to lug a tripod around the Farne Islands for example, which is fair enough!

This article is mostly about using tripods and other forms of support like beanbags and monopods for outdoor photography and in particular wildlife and nature photography. I’ve written a separate post on maximising your chances of getting great shots hand-held. In fact a lot of the information in that article will be useful even when you’re using a tripod to further minimise camera shake and the two posts are companion articles.

But do you need a tripod to obtain sharp shots? There are several situations when some kind of support for your camera and lens are required and this support comes in a multitude of forms. Let’s look at when to use a tripod, monopod, beanbag, or any other type of support – and when to leave it at home.

So what’s a tripod for anyway?

In short: to avoid camera shake. But it’s also useful for framing a shot when the camera is to remain static (landscapes and architectural photography spring to mind) and is an essential staple in most videography to ensure shake-free footage and smooth movements during a scene.

Whenever you have a situation where the shutter speed of the camera is too slow for hand-holding, camera movement can ruin a shot by making the image soft. It’s simply down to the fact that the image moves about on the sensor as the camera exposes the image. The longer the shutter speed, the more pronounced the effect and the more stable and still the camera needs to be to avoid shaky shots. Generally, the faster the shutter speed you can use, the more camera shake is eliminated. However, a fast shutter speed is often not practical. It isn’t just limited to the effect of us as humans handling the camera either, but anything that can shake a camera, including wind.

This shot of a red grouse was taken using a bean-bag resting on my car door

Choosing a tripod

Wooden tripods are, mostly, a thing of the past and usually you’ll find aluminium or carbon fibre as the main materials used. Aluminium is heavier and cheaper than carbon fibre, but the latter is a lot lighter. When choosing a tripod, make sure it’s as stiff as possible when fully extended. Tripods are rated for the weight they can carry, so make sure you buy one that’s sturdy enough. If you put a long lens and camera on a tripod and tap on the legs lightly while looking through the viewfinder, you’ll see the image wobble if the tripod isn’t stiff enough.

Three legs, one leg, or, er six legs?!

Tripod literally means ‘three footed’ and three legs are the most common form of camera support. Leaving aside the three-legged school sports day race, which appears to have been designed to make children as unstable as possible, three feet on the ground stabilises in three dimensions on any surface, even if the ground is uneven. But what about a monopod? One foot is certainly not as stable as three, but is usually a lot lighter, more portable and simpler to use.

Most monopods are portable enough to carry with you when a tripod is out of the question. Some have fold out feet, which emerge from the bottom tube. This isn’t a substitute for a tripod, but can make a good, firm base when there’s no alternative. I’ve also seen walking poles that double up as monopods with a screw head.

What’s all this about six legs, then? Well, if you’ve ever seen anyone using a highly curious beast that resembles a metallic spider more than a camera support, they may well have been using a double tripod setup.

This is an extremely stable setup for use in very challenging situations – typically where a very long lens is being used with a teleconverter in windy conditions. The long focal length really amplifies any vibrations and the lens acts as a sail to catch the wind.

I’ve only rarely ever used this (because it means lugging two tripods around), but the idea is to fix two points on the camera setup, rather than just one. The front tripod attaches to the lens foot and the rear tripod to the camera body.

A modification to this double tripod setup is to use a monopod on the back (camera end), which means a bit less to carry round.

This shot was taken from a boat in Botswana using a tripod and Wimberley Head

Centre Columns

Not all tripods have centre columns, but those that do, have a central tube that runs through the tripod collar where the legs meet at the top. This column is used to extend the tripod height above the collar. In general, a short centre column is a good idea. It’s tempting to extend this column above the collar to increase height, but be aware that the higher you go with this single rod, the more instability it will introduce. It’s better to buy a taller tripod than to extend above the collar.

Some tripods have a reversible centre column, which allows you to turn the camera upside down and get close to the ground. Others have a completely flexible centre column (like the Gitzo Explorer top right) which means you can have the camera in pretty much any position. Great for low and awkward shots and particularly macro photography.

Head Hunting

A tripod has a screw on the top end to either attach the camera directly (in an immovable position), or more usually a tripod head with which to attach the camera whilst giving freedom of motion.

A monopod can be used without a head because you can move the whole leg around while keeping the foot on the ground. But it still doesn’t give you the freedom of motion that a head would give you, so you can add a head onto the top of the ‘pod.

Heads come in quite a variety of forms and all will be rated for a particular maximum weight. This is important because if you try to balance and move a camera and lens on top of a head that can’t cope, it’s unlikely the camera position will stay where you want it.

The heads most useful for wildlife photography are gimbal heads and fluid heads. Gimbal heads, such as the Wimberley Head are great at perfectly balancing a big lens on while allowing completely free movement. You can adjust how much movement there is in each axis to fine-tune to the situation in hand. For big lenses, this is my favourite form of shooting.

A lot of people swear by using a fluid head (sometimes called a video head) for large lenses because of the ability to move around smoothly with the handle at the back. I find them quite good, but just not as easy in the field as a gimbal head. They’re superb for video and lighter lenses.

Ball heads have a ball in a socket with a tripod screw. You can get large ball heads that can cope with big lenses, but ball heads are really better suited to smaller lenses.

Three-way geared heads are fantastic for landscape and architectural images, but hopeless with a big lens.

Quick Release

All my tripod heads and cameras have quick release plates attached so I can easily mount and unmount the camera. I’ve found it useful to buy spare plates for the cameras so I know I’ve always got one handy. I can then use other cameras and other equipment (flashes and so on) on one tripod head. Sometimes, as with the Wimberley Head, the release plate attaches to the lens foot.

This shot was taken using a bean bag from a vehicle (engine off)

Extra stability

When you’re using tripods or monopods, remember to keep the centre column short. Here are a few other tips. You can put your hand on top of the lens to dampen down vibrations. A heavy bag or other weight can be hung from the bottom of the centre column if it has a hook. This can really help with vibrations. If you’re forced to use very slow shutter speeds, you can use a remote release cable or wireless remote to disconnect yourself from the camera.

A similar effect can be achieved by using the self timer function or Exposure Delay (Nikon only I think) to create a short delay between the shutter button being pressed and the shot being taken. Lastly, if you’re using an SLR, you can use mirror lock-up to create a two stage shutter operation. The first press of the shutter button raises the mirror out of the way and the second press (best done via a remote release) actually fires the shutter. What this does is get all vibrations associated with raising the mirror out of the way before the shot is taken.

Legless

If you’re in a hide or a vehicle, tripods and monopods can actually be a nuisance. If you’re not tripping over the legs, or finding that the head plus lens doesn’t fit through the opening, you’re rueing the fixed position that doesn’t allow full movement. Enter: the beanbag.

A beanbag is arguably more stable than a tripod or monopod because it has a very wide base to put your camera or lens on and is only a few centimetres high. That’s obviously no good in outdoor situations where you have to walk around and place the camera somewhere stable (except for ground shots), but a beanbag is a godsend in a hide or car.

Beanbags come in two main flavours: single and double. The double bags are better because they’re bigger and have a natural channel to rest your camera and lens on the top where the two bags meet.

Beanbags are also flexible. They’re often filled with rice and (not surprisingly) beans, but you can fill them full of pretty much anything, including earth. The beauty when travelling by air with them is that you carry them empty and fill them when you arrive. I actually use polystyrene balls to fill mine, which weigh virtually nothing. This is great for general, year round use, although I have to top the bag up every now and again as the balls squash over time. The support isn’t quite as sturdy as with rice either, but the portability of it means that’s my filler of choice most of the year round.

I have heard of a cautionary tale of elephants taking a fancy to the food content of someone’s beanbag, but thankfully I think this is rare!

I’ll get my coat

If you haven’t got a beanbag handy, a coat or fleece will do – folded or scrunched up. They’re not as good as a beanbag, but in those situations where you’ve left yours at home and an opportunity arises, they’re a good option.

Other options

Gorillapods are a great invention: they allow you to wrap their three, flexible legs around anything: a branch or fence post for example. You can also use them for low-level shooting. I often have one in my backpack even when I’m carrying one of my usual tripods. A great example would be for squirrel photography. I’ve set a gorillapod up with a camera and wide angle lens and remotely triggered the shutter. This low position gives a great viewpoint.

Ground pods are are a good option if you need to get down really low. These can be bought (or even made out of a frying pan with a screw mount in it!) and they take a tripod head, including a gimbal head. This means you can use even a really big lens very close to the ground and still achieve nice, fluid movements. They have a flat base, which means you can move them around on the ground easily.

Studio lighting stands are a potential option – sort of. They really aren’t flexible and usually come with fixed, fold-out legs that need a very flat surface, but if you have one handy, they can be used in certain circumstances. They’re not much use outdoors, although I have used them when I’ve needed the camera in a fixed position and have already used both my tripods for wireless flashes.

Foot cords are something I’ve never seen anyone use! Indeed I’ve never tried one myself, although I know they exist. They consist of a cord with a screw to attach to the camera base and are obviously very light weight. The principle is that you put your foot on the end of the cord and pull the camera upwards until the cord is tight. In this position, the amount of vertical movement is limited and therefore it cuts down on some vibration.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed the article. If I’ve missed anything, or you’d like me to expand on something a little more, drop me an email or leave a comment on the post and I’ll try to include your suggestion.

By the way, the answer to whether you should bring a tripod to the Farnes or leave it at home is that if you bring one, you won’t need it, but if you don’t, you’ll wish you had…

Shot using a camera on a Gorillapod and a remote release, the low angle gives an intimate perspective on this red squirrel

My carbon fibre Gitzo Explorer Mk2 G2227 with Wimberley Head supporting the 600mm f/4 lens

The Wimberley Head is a gimbal, which allows smooth and free two-axis motion for big lenses. This setup perfectly balances even the heaviest of equipment

A fairly lightweight monopod with a 300mm f/2.8 lens. Not as sturdy as a tripod, but much more portable and lightweight

A more substantial monopod with fold-out feet. Very convenient and more stable than a thinner, lighter monopod, but much heavier

Using a bag to weigh down my Manfrotto 055CXPRO4 carbon tripod. The bag damps down vibrations, especially in wind. And it was very windy at Bamburgh Castle that day!

Six legs! Two tripods: one on the lens and one on the camera. The camera bag adds vertical stability

A closer look at the double-tripod setup. Note the remote shutter release cable so I don’t even have to touch the camera

A more substantial Gitzo GT5541LS tripod for heavy work. Taken by my friend, Alan Hewitt for N-Photo magazine. In fact it’s his tripod and I wish I’d kept it! If you’re wondering about the gaffer tape, the magazine wanted to know what my 5 essential pieces of equipment are. The world would fall apart without gaffer tape

A Gorillapod in action. The legs can be put in any position, or wrapped around an object

Coat-pod!

A double beanbag on my car. And yes, it’s always this filthy. Note the cord to attach to the car. A very thoughtful addition to a beanbag. Imagine photographing a lion in the Masai Mara 10 feet from your vehicle when the beanbag drops out in your excitement. That’s why they have a safety cord

My Manfrotto 501HDV Pro fluid head, also known as a video head. It allows lovely, damped pan and tilt motion for video and can be very useful for most short to medium lenses. I prefer not to use them for long lenses

My Manfrotto 405 Pro geared three-way head. Great for landscape shots and fine adjustments. Rubbish for anything that moves

This is what the underside of a tripod head looks like with a quick-release plate. The two halves of the plate attach to each other in no time

Photographing birds in flight is one of the most common things to want to achieve in wildlife photography, but it can be fiendishly difficult. Here I’ll go through some of my tried and trusted techniques to help you avoid some of the pitfalls.

Freemotion Support

In general, I find it best to try and avoid using a tripod if possible because this gives you freedom of movement in three dimensions. This may not be practical if you’re using a very large lens, but then using a very large lens with a long focal length can multiply the problem of tracking a bird in flight anyway. Consider the difference between the naked eye and a telescope: with the naked eye, it’s easy to watch and follow a bird in flight, even if it’s moving quickly and erratically.

Then imagine trying to keep this same bird in the much smaller field of view of a telescope. In reality, what happens is that the bird moves in and out of view as you struggle to follow its motion. Similarly, having to physically move a long (and probably heavy) lens around to keep up with a fast flying bird is pretty difficult, although it can be made easier by using a gimbal head like the Wimberley.

So, if you must use a tripod, try and make sure the head allows smooth, fast, free-flowing movements.

Flight mode

Ok, let’s have a think about camera settings. What you’re aiming to achieve here is a sharp shot of a fast moving bird and you need to give yourself every chance to capture this in the heat of the moment. Set your camera to continuous release mode (Nikon) / continuous shooting drive mode (Canon). This allows your camera to rapid-fire a sequence of shots in quick succession.

Then set the focus mode to continuous autofocus so that the camera adjusts focus continuously as long as you have your finger on the shutter button. On a Nikon camera, this is AF-C and on a Canon, it’s AI Servo. AI Focus is a Canon intermediate mode which is a bit like Marmite: you either love it or hate it. What this mode does is try to determine when you need single focus and when to switch to continuous focus. When I used to shoot Canon on the 5D I really didn’t like it, but if you’re a Canon aficionado, give it a go.

As for shutter speed and aperture, you’ll need enough speed to freeze the motion without running out of light. Increase the ISO if you haven’t got enough speed. I tend to use middling apertures for birds in flight to get enough depth of field to catch the head and part of the wings. That’s usually about f/8 to f/11.

Fine tuning

Modern DLSRs have a bewildering array of extra settings to help you get focus right in continuous mode. A couple of the more useful ones for our purposes are:

• the number of focus points;
• how long the camera tracks the subject.

These settings are often buried in a deep settings menu, but are sometimes more accessible. They’re well worth looking at.

When setting the number of focus points that the camera uses for autofocus, you’re likely to get different answers from different people. I personally prefer to use fewer focus points because it speeds up the autofocus system (it doesn’t have to do as much work) and it makes selecting the area of focus more accurate. This latter point is important because if you let the camera use all its focus points at once, how do you know it hasn’t locked onto the end of the wing instead of the eye of the bird? The eye is arguable the most important focus point on an animal because it creates a connection with us in the photograph. Usually, the image is weakened if the eye isn’t in focus, unless you have a good reason for focusing on a different part of the bird to draw attention to that.

I often set the number of focus points to a single point to get as much accuracy as possible, but when this is proving difficult to attain any kind of focus (you do have to be pretty accurate), I’ll usually go for 9 or 21 or something similar, which is a good compromise of area and speed.

How long the camera tracks the subject before it attempts to focus on something else is a good way of adjusting the camera’s response to the type of flight involved. Typically you have the option to set the length of time the autofocus system locks onto the part of the bird it thinks is in focus. Initially, you might expect it to be best to set this to as long as possible so that once you’ve locked focus, it’s best to keep that focus even if your quarry veers around the frame. The problem with this is that if you haven’t locked on to the correct part of the bird, the camera will keep this incorrect lock for a long time!

So, in practise, it’s best to keep the tracking time short, or even off altogether. This is rather an acquired taste and I’d advise you to experiment to see what suits you.

Pan handling

When birds fly across your field of view from one side to the other, the best way to follow this linear motion is to pan the action by swivelling your body at the hips. Grip the camera to your eye with your right hand while supporting underneath the lens with your left. Your left elbow should point downwards and you can tuck it into your chest to provide stability. This helps lock out some of the vertical vibrations and provides a solid position to pan with.

Follow the bird’s flight path and fire off a number of shots in continuous release mode. With any luck, one of these shots will be sharp.

Incoming!

Let’s take puffins as an example. One of the delights of the Farne Islands is that you’re inundated with puffins in flight. On the up side, this means that there are several opportunities to practise flight shots. On the down side it often means too much choice! Let’s stick with the up side. From experience, the best way to photograph puffins is to put the camera down for a few minutes and watch where they’re coming from first. They often forage in the same place (which can be tens of miles away) and will come back to the islands from the same direction. This direction depends presumably on factors like the wind and so on, but you can quite quickly determine where your quarry is likely to come from. There are usually two or three hotspots like this on each of the main islands at the Farnes.

The next obstacle to surmount (assuming you’ve found a reliable flight path) is to get your camera to track these little birds as they come in at speed. Many people say to me that, having never encountered a puffin before, they’re surprised at how small they are: sort of pint-sized. Less to aim at! In fact puffins are also deceptively fast: they appear on the horizon as a dot and seem to spend a long time to grow to puffin-sized missiles. It’s important to give your camera’s autofocus system as much time as possible to lock onto the flying puffin. Start tracking the bird as soon as you see it in the distance and keep your finger half pressed on the shutter button to continuously focus until the bird is a good size in the frame.

At this moment you’ve probably relaxed, assuming you’ve got the shot in the bag; at which point the bird appears to accelerate and change direction, zooming over your head. I’ve lost count of the number of times this has happened. The trick here is to try to anticipate what’s going to happen. Ok, each puffin is different and you’ll get more blurred shots than keepers, but persevere, and you’ll hopefully get one sharp. Practise indeed makes perfect.

Another thing about puffins: if they haven’t come in to land with their trademark sand-eels, it’s probably because they can see marauding gulls waiting for them. Fear not! They’ll usually do several circuits of the island and attempt a further landing, so it’s worth keeping an eye on the same bird to see if it comes round again. I once watched one for thirteen circuits before I lost sight of it!

Creative Blur

So far, I’ve been talking about taking sharp shots of birds in flight. Sometimes if the shot is too sharp though, it can freeze the motion so much that all sense of movement and action is lost. In this case, it’s worth thinking about lengthening the shutter speed a bit to allow some motion in the wings.

Exposure

To an extent, if there are dark areas on the underside of the bird you’re photographing, you can lift those shadows in post-processing, particularly if you’re shooting in RAW. However, there is a limit to this and if you try to lift shadows too much, you’ll end up with grainy, noisy areas in the photograph that look unnatural and soft. The best policy is to try to get exposure correct in camera (isn’t that always the way?) This can be tricky though, because you can end up fighting the sky for correct exposure. In general I’d recommend over-exposing a little with exposure compensation to bring up the shadows. But don’t do this so much that any of the bird over-exposes. You can’t recover blown highlights, even in RAW, so that’s your gauge for maximum over-exposure. The way to achieve this is by trial and error and examining your flashing highlights indicator and histogram. Switch these display options on (in your playback options) as they’ll indicate when you’ve gone too far with exposure. Just a tiny side-note about this is that I’ve noticed that my Nikon cameras are somewhat over-cautious with flashing highlights and small areas that are slightly over-exposed can indeed be recovered in post production when shooting RAW. That’s just my D4 and D800E though, so try it on your camera.

If you’re having problems with exposure, you could try adding a burst of flash to light up the underside of the bird. The requires the bird to be near enough for you to reach it of course, but it’s often a practical way of balancing out a strong back-light and under-exposed bird.

If ind doubt, always expose correctly for the bird at the risk of blowing the sky to bits. After all, it’s the wildlife you’re interested in, rather than the sky.

Negative space

In general, I like to put a bit of space on one side of a bird that is flying across my view from one side to the other. This is because it’s natural for the eye to want the bird to fly into space, rather than crash into the edge of the picture! This can go hand-in-hand with the old rule of thirds, whereby you position your subject on one of the cross points of an imaginary noughts & crosses (tic-tac-toe) grid so that the bird is off centre.

Pre-focus

Sometimes it’s impossible to follow a bird in flight. Hummingbirds are a case in point. The best policy with awkward customers like this is to try to predict where they’re going to be and manually pre-focus your lens at that point.  Then it’s all down to timing the shot correctly when the bird comes into that sweet-spot.

Practise on gulls

You may not be particularly interested in gulls (I personally love them), but they’re ideal subjects to practise birds in flight shots. This is because their flight path tends to be more linear and smooth than a lot of the more erratic birds you’ll encounter. They tend to glide around relatively slowly, which makes them ideal to practise on.

Now over to you! Let me know how you get on and if I’ve missed anything that you’d like me to cover.

Practise on more interesting birds!

If you’ve enjoyed this article, but you’d like me to help you get the best out of your flight shots in person, why not come on a photo safari, where you’ll get plenty of opportunities to photograph amazing birds like eagles, rollers and vultures as well as the usual big 5.