Approaching the Scene 031: How to Setup a Fluid Head on any Tripod

[Music] well hey everybody Hudson here and for today's approach in the scene my studio here in Portland Oregon looks like a tripod for us because we're gonna talk about camera support its 2019 I haven't done a video yet on sort of my evolving work with fluid heads and tripod legs and camera support so today I thought I would go through show you some later tips and tricks I've learned both about attaching arca-swiss clamp systems to fluid heads and about how to set up your traditional center column style tripod or a modular systemic tripod or a video style tripod with a bowl I'm going to go through in detail show you how to set up each one of those with a fluid head for those of you that that don't know about my pension for fluid heads just search I think that a fluid head makes everything photographic easier you know once you start working with one of these fluid heads they're lighter well they're not lighter they're about the same weight as a good ball head they're cheaper though than your better ball heads I mean this fluid head that I'm holding right here varies depending on popularity from between about a hundred and twenty dollars to one hundred and seventy dollars depending on how many people are buying them from Amazon and B&H at the given time but its rock-solid easy to compose with works great for video or stills and it just makes your whole life easier whether you're doing panorama is whether you're shooting with a long lens gimbal style it sort of is the one head that rules them all and I've converted a lot of photographers to these heads with never a complaint so we'll talk about how to set one of these great systems up on your standard you know tripod that you have right now with the center column or if you're gonna get a systemic tripod where you can replace the plate with one of these Bowl adapters and put a bowl leveling system beneath it or if you've got a video head you know I think that tripods are one of those things where people spend a lot of money kind of chasing after what they're looking for before they finally settle on the right thing if they just spend a little bit of money up front they'll be happy from the beginning and getting better photos you know one of the things that I'm known for or is ultra high-resolution panoramas that are immensely printable you know I can print really really large enlarged ability image quality and a lot of that comes from having a really stable system that you're working with and these days I really like to work with time-lapse and video and for those pursuits having a fluid head that pans level and tilts level is just essential and I really like action in wildlife in sports and for those activities being able to pan whether you're doing video or whether you doin stills without losing your level is just essential it's it's it's a great thing I think if you try it out you're never gonna go back to a ball head so we'll talk about how to set all that up for those of you who haven't been watching these approach in the scene videos its overall a conversation about photography whether it's about making better images in the field editing better images in the studio talking about the state of the industry talking about the convergence of Stills video time-lapse but all in all a conversation and I really invite questions you know you know where the YouTube comments section is you can find me via email I'm easy to find we'll take a couple questions at the end I'm printing that we're brought around by the late video I did on soft proofing and getting your monitor the right calibration to get better prints I had a lot of questions come from that but this whole video is driven by you guys out there being curious about how to set up the fluid head I get a lot of questions from people that are buying the parts going to my links again links to all this stuff is gonna be you just go down in the youtube description there's a link section right there for all the stuff that I talk about but this is one of those things that's driven by that so I'm gonna start off with talking about systemic and bowl tripod systems then I'll talk about the center column system alright so I got two tripods here one is my get so 3543 XLS this is this is my favorite tripod it weighs under 5 pounds and it gets 79 inches tall it's a carbon fiber it's my it's kind of my baby I love to have beat the ability to be on a hillside and throw one long leg down and still be at eye level you know despite that leg reaching way too there's just a whole bunch of things that enables having a tall tripod the newer systemic systems whether they're from enduro or get so or any other brand they have kind of a rough opening up here and a lot of times they come with just a plate and the whole top is kind of a ring that just clamps at the top so you know what you're gonna have to do if you get it with the plate is go ahead and buy this type of bowl adapter I have a son way photo Bowl adapter here it's linked in my links look in the in the description down below it just drops in here when this this clamp is open and then you have just kind of a ratcheting little clamp here that yeah just you know you can press it in it's got kind of a caning mechanism and then you turn it and press it in to get that cam in and just a couple turns locks that down so that this thing is not coming out then it folds back out of the way and suddenly you have a bowl tripod so you can just switch from a plate to a bowl that easily with one of these I'm gonna use this this enduro which is another a little bit more affordable series of tripods I link and they don't make this one anymore this was a just a bowl tripod that they made a while back with a 75 millimeter bowl now they tend to make systemic systems they have the grand stealth series and I have those linked where they have that same system of plates they're going to need a bowl adapter and what you need to mount a fluid head is some ability to get the fluid head level because as we talked about you know it simply tilts and pans so that you're always staying level but you need to get level beneath it in order for it to be effective so the simple way to do that is with one of these 75 millimeter 1/2 Bowl leveling adapters and one of the cool things about them is you take your fluid head and it's just got a metal base plate you thread it on here like you would onto any tripod boom it's on and then with a three millimeter allen wrench you can there's these three little set screws underneath these adapters that I linked I blinkin Manfrotto adapter as well as an enduro adapter enduro comes with the bowl adapter it's for the grand Cirie's so it comes with that bowl noting knowing that you're gonna need it the Manfrotto you need to buy the the bowl adapter to go into that systemic system that some way photo one works with enduro or with get so it's pretty uniform and where's that other one it's kind of deep in here but there are these three little set screws and when you just thread those up and turn a little bit you don't need to over torque them you know I can use the the short end of the Allen with just thumb pressure then all of a sudden it won't move you've locked this plate to that so you don't have to worry about torquing it down and worry about its little system for locking the pan getting damaged you just torque those three little Allen wrenches into it and there's a threaded stud that comes down and there's a hole in the bowl you drop it down through there's a handle that comes up from below and all you have to do is clamp it boom you're set you can readjust now the nice thing about these Manfrotto 500 aah fluid heads that I like you just tilt them forward there's a nice little bubble level in there and you can just see the bubble level Boop your level now anything you do with this to pan to tilt you're gonna stay perfectly level if you locking your tilt you can just pan a little bit lock your position you want to tilt a little bit you'll leave your pan locked and tilt you want to track things in motion you're gonna stay level really really handy system so that's how to set it up on a bowl tripod system and this is what I really prefer I'm not a big fan of having the having the the center column in your way they also make short little handles for these for these bowl adapters I think the Enduro one comes with both this longer handle that's easier to grip and and tighten down and loosen and as well as a little one that lets you get really low to the ground I carry both of those with me in the bag so then the other thing that's different about a fluid head is that they use these plates instead of the traditional clamp that we're used to they have a plate in here most video guys they just put this screw into the tripod socket on the bottom of their camera mount this plate to their camera and slide forward and backward well that's great if you're if you're gonna be working with one last lens maybe Oh guys typically have a scene they're gonna work with a lens they're never gonna flip to vertical because video doesn't work so well vertical for us we need to mount an ARCA Swiss clamp to this plate the neat thing about it is because the plate slides forward and backward on this we can get our camera balanced so there's no flop like there's a ball head you can leave this thing loose and it'll just hang there so there's two methods for it you know one I have these plates linked from both I think from Amazon is the good source for these these are a company called how and they're really really affordable I think they're like $30 they have a nice long handle and you can mount them just with a single screw right through the center just like you would mount the camera to that plate with their handle sticking back back off the back and the nice thing about that is once you do that you know you can slide it forward and back but it's always easy to just open and close and get your camera locked in here so at this point I have to say that if you're going to be using a fluid head and you ever do vertical compositions you're gonna want that L bracket that I mentioned earlier so you just slide your L bracket in lock that down and you're set up to compose a horizontal image you loosen it slide it out slip it in vertically boom you're set to do vertical compositions the nice thing is that if you if you move this thing forward and backward you can get into that perfect place where I can just leave the system open there's no chance of it flopping I can move it around it's not going anywhere the other great thing is that if you have any desire to do video with the fluid head you know clearly you can you can pan it's got this nice fluid inside where if you just hold equal pressure to your movement if you just push with the same force it'll just smoothly pan through the scene you get those nice cinematic movements that you see in Hollywood films that's why the video guys love these things if you're doing birds and wildlife you can track action sports you can just be moving around you're not losing level anytime you're in motion so really really handy for so many things and again same weight but half the price is your top ball heads like the really right stuff pH 55 it's exactly the same weight with the set up right here but you know at 120 to 170 dollars depending on when you're buying it that's a heck of a lot cheaper so that's the system right there I'll show you another little setup that I like I like to have a spare plate that's a little bit longer you can buy these I have these linked to this is just a longer Manfrotto plate and if I have a longer lens that I'm using that has a foot and a rotating collar then I just mount that foot to that longer plate and keep it in my bag so when I want to mount that lens with the camera to the tripod I just mount the lens I lock the tilt so it's not going to flop before I get the balance set pull this flute this fisheye I have on here off and then I can just let's see rotate that's just a touch get it on there click and then the really great thing is you know I can I can loosen this and just get it balanced that's about the point I can leave this thing open move around I can I can still swivel on my collar to get vertical or horizontal like it would on a regular tripod but I can let go and it's not going to flop again we got that balance point and I can track action if I lock my if I lock my rotating color I can track action like birds and flight or sports just like I would on a gimbal and stay level while I'm doing it so really really handy and and I had a different system before where I was using at multiple clamps I think that just mounting the foot to a long plate these long plates are $29 well worth just being able to mount that foot directly on there okay one more cool system that I have from Kirk I'm a Kirk ambassador just to put that out there but from Kirk what happens with these plates is you've got this little rubber seal that comes in here you can drop screws through this opening and then they slide along there's kind of a gap so you put two screws in here and this Kirk clamp is really cool because it's gonna let you flip orientations in case you need to to put the camera on two different ways I like to put it on kind of as far back as possible so in my case I put it kind of vertically across the L plate and you're gonna need like a four millimeter allen wrench that's the size of these little screws the Kirke plate comes with them and you're just kind of kind of this thing is filled like a cheese grater with threaded quarter 20 holes tripod mount sized holes and you're just gonna get that threading into the first one there the other one across to where it starts getting into the lace you want sort of threading that one and it's nice because you have two screws connecting to this guy this is my real preferred way to mount to a fluid head now just because it's rock-solid and it's more flexible I'll show you why and I put a link to this too this is just a bi-directional Kirk clamp and so you mount this plate you got it nice and snug it's not going anywhere it's on that that Manfrotto plate and then the Kirk clamp that comes with it has an integrated allen key in it you can pop out that four millimeter allen key it's got a little square engagement point that engages with this piece so that you can set it down this way well I would put it with the the clamp knob sticking back you put it on this way boom and it's gonna be set to mount your camera in and slide back and forth and you got this nice Kirk one twist clamp but it's suddenly you wanted to switch and use it another way you could just loosen that screw without even taking it off as you lift it up it'll just turn drop back down into its square point boom and all of a sudden you've got a long orientation if you're not inclined to use a long lens with the foot if you have an arc or rail if you're using multiple systems this lets you flip back and forth which orientation your clamp is facing in the fluid head just lickety-split and it's just really nicely designed a great clamp plus I just really like the quality of the clamp itself so I tend to leave this guy on there and I love that the tool just locks in place there and it's there whenever you need it all right so having talked about how to set up your fluid head and connect your camera to it with a bowl or a systematic tripod I'm gonna talk about how to do it with your traditional center column tripod now all right so I talked about the system that I like to use I really like just the bowl head with the half ball level or underneath it's simple it's easy it's really efficient and I certainly feel like it's a little bit more stable than a tripod whose legs all come together in the same pointing you have that center column issue so here's a lightweight carbon fiber tripod by Benro that I have here with a really short center column and you know if it the problem with mounting up a fluid head on this is if you just mount it directly you're gonna have to level the system with the legs every time and that's a complete pain in the ass so we don't want to go there but there are a couple companies that make a product to go between the head and legs that'll let make that process really simple this one's by Kirk it's a Kirk Industries perk enterprise solutions leveling adapter boom you just thread it onto that plate on your tripod and then what it does is there's just a little paddle here that when you get thirty degrees of tilt to level with and a nice big bubble level easily visible on the side the second you tilt that trip that back clockwise you're locked nothing's going anywhere so you just mount your fluid head right on top of that make sure you don't cross thread it and what you're gonna want to do with this you know you're not gonna get that set screw attachment system so you're just gonna gonna torque that panning knob not too far don't damage it but you torque it pretty strongly tight and then just swivel it till it's snug and then you just loosen it you can pan you want it well a little snugger than that make sure that everything's tight everything's locked lock it in there and then loosen it you can see it's another reason why it's a little less favored by me but it works quite well you know you can you can get that head thirty degrees a level that's the thing that I really like about the Kirk is it's got a lot of play and ability to get that head nice and level and it's a nice simple motion with a big easy-to-use paddle control right there I also link one from Accra Tech it's a little bit lower profile this is kind of nice though because I think a lot of tripods with center columns you know part of the reason you get with the center column is to get a little bit more height maybe you're stooping down to see so one of the nice things with the Kirk Enterprise adapter is that it actually adds about a three and a half inches in height so gets you up a little bit higher it's a great system so whichever way you go what you really need to go between the fluid head and your traditional tripod that you want to convert is just one of these leveling adapters that lets you simply and easily level the fluid head so that you can do those pans and tilts nice and level without futzing with getting this leg a little bit lower and then that leg you know surveyor style definitely easier to have something in between the levels so I think you know to reiterate what we really need to get set up with a fluid head if you're on one of these ball heads is gonna be if you've got a systemic system where you can replace a plate with a bowl you need that 75 millimeter bowl that drops in there and then you need the half ball leveling adapter I have all that stuff linked if you're gonna be mounting your camera to a fluid head for the first time you're gonna want to have that that plate system set up in a way that lets you easily clamp an ARCA Swiss L bracket right in I think this Kirke systems really nice just as you can flip or orientations really easily if you want to save a little bit of money go a little lighter lower profile this helped one that I link is really small and light again I can't recommend highly enough one of the best things I've done just throwing these longer plates that let you slide around a little bit more get get get the weight balanced a little bit easier right on to the feet of your long lenses those feet detach so you don't have this big thing on there when you're shooting with just the lens and you just slip it back on so really really nice system that's what I'm enjoying using with all my long lenses every one of my long lenses has an extra-long Manfrotto plate for the fluid that just mounted to it you know one other thing that I think everybody should have on their tripod and then it just surprises the heck out of me that not that many people are using is a stone bag they cost almost nothing I have them again linked in those product links and you just you just velcro it on here it just goes in a spot on your legs this is my big tall get so deployed by the way I told you it gets almost seven feet tall I'm six feet tall by reference no problem standing right underneath it even with the head attached so and it's just so nice to have a tall tripod but you got a stone bag like this you know for one thing if you're not using some bit of your kit toss it in there your filters whatever you happen to be working with you've got a place to set them usually it's down lower it's right at hands reach the other thing that's great about it is if it's windy and you're having a hard time keeping everything still you know take some heavy stuff take some stones take a full water bottle drop them in there you just added a bunch of weight to your tripod made it even more stable but you don't have to carry it around you take it right back out just take some stones from on site and toss them in there so hope that clarifies stuff for people if you have more questions about mounting up a fluid head on your system don't hesitate to ask you know where the comments section on youtube is you can email me it's I'm easy to find so a couple of great questions about printing came through in the last couple of weeks and I want to address a couple of them one is from Robert and it's on converting images from the typical color space and to CMYK to send out to print he's got a lab doing a book for him and they want everything in CMYK at 300 pixels per inch to be sent out and that's that's kind of an old-school lab requirement you're not going to encounter it very often but if you do the one thing I saw in your answer you you had it laid out that you're converting to you're used to using Lightroom and working on raw so you're converting those images in Photoshop or you're sending out a JPEG to Photoshop using the Edit convert profile to CMYK and then you know resizing it saving it at 300 PPI well I would switch that around a little bit so I would just export from Lightroom or from on-one if you're using photo raw a 300 pixel per inch image or DPI image into Photoshop or whatever program you're gonna use to convert that color space and if you look through Lightroom won't let you do CMYK I'm not sure if I'm one does that have to look into that but if you're gonna go into Photoshop the way I would do it is I would send it as a PSD into Photoshop so you're not gonna be compressing all those colors and and robbing it of the ability to shift colors around into spaces by making it a jpg you're putting it into a really narrow color space generally you're just you're just stripping the file of a lot of data and I'd rather have that data around for the conversion from one color space to another so use a PSD send it into Photoshop convert it into CMYK make that PSD at 300 pixels per inch you know set that up in the export from in your export settings or your external editing settings and Lightroom or in photo raw that you're gonna have 300 PPI in a prophoto RGB color space for that initial file that's the widest color space you can get and then have Photoshop use this engine to package that down to CMYK and then export it as a JPEG or TIFF save that as into a folder that you're gonna send off so that's my advice for that you want to be moving from a wide space to a narrower space you don't want to go wide to super narrow to a little bit wider that you're gonna wind up pinching information in stripping color that might be usable in the printing process so one hint on that the other question I got was from somebody who was talking about soft proofing I did the monitor calibration video and they said you know why does it look like haze has been applied to my image when I proof the image soft proof the image on my screen with a matte paper and it's really simple the the software is doing its job if you think about it when we see images on a backlit LCD screen we have a ton of vibrant color a lot of dynamic range there's dark blacks there's bright highlights we're seeing a sea of color and a lot of different levels of dynamic range you know tonal range whatever you want to call it and color range when you move into paper and ink that gets more limited and when you work with a semi glossy paper or a luster paper you've got deeper blacks brighter highlights you got well highlights are determined by how bright the paper is in the first place but deeper blacks and more vibrant colors that come out in that luster paper or semi-gloss if you go into a matte paper there's just not as dark of blacks there's a lot less dynamic range to work with a lot less tonal range and so it's gonna look a little more washed out it's gonna look a little less contrast II so that's the point whatever software you're using you know if you're proofing in photo raw if you're proofing in Lightroom create a version or a virtual copy of that raw file look at it how it's gonna print on that matte paper and then adjust the contrast of that printing proof you know if you turn off the proofing it nail it garish just on screen but you're adjusting it for how it's gonna look on that paper with that ink that's what it's doing it's giving you a kind of a virtual look at what that paper is capable of displaying and how the image as edited is gonna translate to ink and paper so it may look washed out and you may need to pull contrasts I would say the settings that I most often shift when I'm doing a printing version or a printing virtual copy are contrast saturation I'm generally pulling those to the right boosting those a little bit sometimes shadow detail and sometimes tweaking color just a little bit depending upon the paper so hope that answers a few people's questions remember I want this to be a conversation so hit me with more I'm gearing up to go to Death Valley really excited about that I'll be leaving in ten days for the drive down in El Jefe the Sprinter van I got a fun workshop planned for five days in Death Valley when I get back I'll be gearing up for Charleston and then shortly thereafter is the North Oregon coast at Cannon Beach most of my workshops are filling up pretty tightly there's still some spots left for Cannon Beach though and Cannon Beach is a killer workshop we've got big beautiful sea stacks we're staying right by haystack rock along with a couple other sea stacks Indian Beach there's the old shipwreck at Fort Stevens this beautiful cove called short stands with old-growth forest and stream flowing down through Northwest native vegetation there's a ton of stuff to photograph there so you know look into it it's up on my website I'll put a link in the YouTube description too I'd love to have you come join me on the North Oregon coast that's a fun one you

Channel: Hudson Henry Photography

Views: 22,919

Rating: 4.970015 out of 5

Keywords: Fluid Head, Tripod, Panorama, Photo Education, Photography Training, How To, Nikon, Z6, Z7, How to Setup a Fluid Head

Id: j1h8YrcjtjY

Length: 27min 44sec (1664 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 21 2019