Monopod for WILDLIFE Photography? iFootage Cobra 2 C180 II Field Review.

g'day and welcome to the channel in today's video i'm going to be trying out a monopod for the very first time for wildlife photography ifootas reached out to me and they said hey dude would you be interested in trying out the cobra 2 monopod my first reaction was to politely decline because i don't use monopods i use a tripod and a gimbal as you would have seen in my previous videos however i then thought well i've never used a monopod so how can i have an opinion on it so i thought why not send it through so they've sent it to me it's arrived and i want to head out into the field and just give it a go i'm going to visit the bush some bushland i'm going to visit a local lake and just put it through its paces if you want to jump straight to my thoughts check the video chapters below or in the description but for now let's head out in the field and give it a try so i'm in the warby national park at the moment there's a few birds about i've got my big 500 mil my r5 1.4 so it's a fairly heavy rig sitting on top of the monopod and we'll just see how it goes uh i'm just going to be walking around i'm not doing any setups okay so i've just actually stumbled across a couple of turquoise parrots that are feeding in the grass i can see a female she's just in the grass over here and uh i can only see her head so try and get a few shots of her head see what they come out like oh that's amazing there she is you can see it eye looking us through the grass not sure what sort of shot it'll make it'll be interesting all the same oh that was a good start very cool we've got a yellow tufted honeyeater right here in front of us so the yoga tufted honey you're just feeding on these native gravillas so it's just a matter of waiting to try and get waiting for the bird to get itself isolated here we go here we so we're go watching the we're just watching the bird waiting for it to hopefully get itself isolated on it's feeding going from flower to flower there's one at the top right here which would be amazing if it goes up there so he's jumping around at the back and i can't see him so it's no good getting a photo when he's right in the middle of these bushes so we really want him here we go he's on there he's on there he's on there he's on there he's up there we get it it's just about watching the subject watching how they feed and trying to set yourself up so that you can get that bird isolated in some way because we're not doing sit-ups i'm heavily reliant on the bird waiting for the bird to land where i want it so so [Music] okay i've just spotted an eastern yellow robin he's up on the he's up on this tree here so he's flying around up here they perch and then they drop down so what we might need to do is just track him and watch him and see how he's up hopefully he's going to land low so we'll just keep an eye on him he's up up the top of this tree there he is on this part oh look at this how good this he's naturally landed on this on this dead stick there we go at the top [Music] i'm not sure if we got the eye contact i was after but ah there he is oh that's nice oh he's on this oh that's beautiful they perch on the side of these trees [Music] he loves landing on the side of this tree it's got a dead branch coming up and we can get him isolated on that dead branch i'm just trying to think if i can position myself to a better spot because he lands on it so i might just reposition myself see if we can't get a different shot on that all right so i'm walking around and i'm looking at this dead branch and i'm going to like get a nice background right about here looks good okay okay yeah this is this is fantastic so you can see this is the um dead branch that i'm talking about just looks nice let's hope he comes back and lands on it would you believe it that i went back to get the camera in the dirt land back on the perch i have to wait now and hopefully it comes back waiting game now to hopefully this robin comes back he hasn't come back yet but i'm going to be patient i'm just going to wait if you see a bird land on a nice perch there's a high chance of a return to that perch it's just a matter of often waiting and setting up his anti-kindness i've never photographed one of these before oh my god oh my god this shot oh wow oh my god this little anti-kindness is on the top of this [Music] i just want to explain what just happened and it's one of the highlights of wildlife photography is that you are out in the bush you're out in nature you just don't know what's going to happen and i'm here waiting for this decent yellow robin which still hasn't turned up by the way and out of the corner of my eye i see movement so i've had a look and i can see this little what looks like a rat scurrying around but i know it's not a rat and in australia we have these little mammals called anti-kinase and i've never photographed them and in fact i've never really seen them because they're not really my forte however it started scurrying up this dead tree trunk and so i've moved my camera obviously and i'll focus on it it was a bit obstructed by a bit of eucalypt so you know i took a few shots and sure enough i'm pretty sure that's what it was anyway i keep watching this little anti-kindness and then it scurries up to the top of this tree and it's perched on the very top of this um dead branch i've rattled off a few shots i've got a tiny bit of video and then off it went and i've probably got well i've never got i haven't got a shot before but the shot i got i'm over the moon with it's so cool it's got all the detail it's you know it just captures their sense of this little anti-kindness and i never ever would have anticipated to get that shot today so just an absolute highlight so i waited a good half for that eastern yellow robin to come back and it never came back unfortunately but that's just the way it goes while i was waiting a yellow tufted honey it actually landed on the exact perch and we got some really nice shots that you know again i didn't expect to get and if i hadn't been waiting there i wouldn't have got those photos so i think today just showed you that you can get nice shots just simply walking around in the bush you know i didn't use any sort of calls or food or any setups i just wandered about and sort of just watched the bird's behavior waited for them to get onto a nice perch or an open area and took some photos so i'm at a local lake and i'm here for a reason this monopod believe it or not actually has this foot on the bottom which i'm going to use like my ground pod so i'm going to actually use just the foot of this monopod to shoot some greaves and ducks and whatnot so how does that actually work well at the bottom here we've got three feet that you can come out like so so this is how you know the monopod will generally stand like this and it's got a ball head here but i don't need this part of the monopod so i can just simply pull on this red lever and this detaches from this foot and it leaves us with just the foot all right so we'll mount my lens onto this little uh foot and see how it works alrighty so we've got obviously got a quick release plate on the bottom of the lens and i can just pull down on the red here and drop it in there and it's locked into place all right all right so let me set the scene for you i'm at a local lake i've seen an australian grieve that's breeding let's build a nest and it's currently building a nest and i believe it might be on eggs out in the lake so i'm just on the water's edge this is people walk around here all the time so the bird's not um fussed by me being here so i'm just waiting now to try and get a good pose at the moment the birds bums facing towards us which isn't ideal and that's part of it you know you just have to wait and be patient and eventually the bird will change position so i'm here i'm laying i'm waiting oh it's up it's moving the egg which is pretty cool i can get that behavior would be nice just taking lots of photos [Music] do [Music] something that probably doesn't come across in some of my videos is how much downtime you have um and i actually like that it's a good thing you know i'm laying here by the water's edge i'm actually just waiting for the sun to come down could be another half an hour or so before i get that really nice light i've got shots of the bird i'm happy with but i just want some shots with that golden light so i'm just going to have to lay here and wait but i don't want to be anywhere else to be honest i'm quite happy just laying here even though i'm laying on the ground and it's not all that comfortable i don't care i'm just in my element laying here waiting a bit of anticipation of what sort of shots i'm going to get yeah i couldn't be happier [Music] [Music] so the birds are just changing over and i'm hoping to get a shot with the two birds in the one frame that's the goal and we can see one bird sort of looking at us so fingers crossed that we can get some shot with two birds that would be ideal that would sort of up the behaviour that's what we're going for so we've got shots of the bird on its own but having two birds doing something is ideal the light now is absolutely sublime it's beautiful just casting the most beautiful colors on the bird the water looks nice [Music] all right the sun's going down and i'm just photographing these black frontal doctrines just waiting for them to come to me [Music] [Music] [Music] let's start off by just saying i had a lot of fun and i was really happy with the photos that i was able to capture so the highlight of the outings was just that the monopod exceeded my expectations the fact that i could shoot both in the bush and at the lake with one piece of equipment shows just how versatile this monopod is so this model that i have before me is actually the ifootage cobra 2 c180 a bit of a mouthful but this one's carbon fiber and it goes to 1.8 meters now you can get an aluminium version and you can get a shorter version as well so just be aware of that so this carbon fiber version weighs around 1.25 kilos or what is that 2.75 pounds so it's very light for what it is and it does fold down into a very small package so amazingly it actually extends all the way to 1.8 meters it can go even higher meaning even the tallest person will have no issues using this monopod whatsoever and also impressive is the fact that its maximum load is 10 kg it can easily take pretty much any camera or lens without an issue whatsoever now in regards to price this carbon fiber version goes for around 194 usd and the aluminium version around 154 so i believe that's a fair price for the quality of kit that you're getting okay let's start off with the positives the first thing is it's just extremely well made you can tell it's good quality just the minute you put your hands on it you know it's extremely smooth and it's operation how it goes up and down ball heads good the foot's good just everything about it oozes quality all right let's start with my favorite feature of this monopod and it's actually at the bottom of the monopod and it's this mini tripod with a ball head on it which allows you to swivel it around and thankfully it does actually detach so i can remove the monopod and that leaves me with this tiny little tripod and this is absolutely incredible i believe you can purchase this on its own but it's extremely sturdy it's got three feet that you can see and they're all adjustable so you can change you know you can have it laying flat if you wanted to like so or bring the feet down into a position that you want it's very sturdy and on top of that's this ball head and it's got a little knob on the side that you can turn and i've used as you saw i used this to put this entire weight on which is pretty incredible it can as i mentioned 10 kilos so this foot's going to have a lot of good purposes in the future and i'll probably use this probably more than the actual monopod itself so pretty amazing the other benefit of the monopod is you don't actually have to put another ball head or some sort of gimbal on top to mount your big lens obviously just for that quick release plate i can just drop it on there give it a bit of a wiggle and it's on there and i can easily adjust the height up and down to suit my style and because we've got that we've got the ball head on the bottom it enables us to move it around quite easily you know all that motion we don't have to have a ball head here the only downside to no bullet here is the angle when you're trying to get high you have to bend down which is a little bit awkward but i mean you could just quickly raise the height i suppose and come back like so if you wanted to so not a major thing not a major issue but you know i didn't really find any issues not having that ball head or gimbal and that's just one less thing that you need so having the ball head at the base is kind of genius in my opinion that's for sure the other obvious advantage to the monopod is it's just a lot lighter than the big old tripod so it's only 1.25 kilos so there's still a bit of weight once we add the lens in the camera but it's just that little bit lighter than the tripod and i find it quite i found it quite easy just to throw it over my shoulder like so and then just walk through the bush um like this i've only got one leg sticking out instead of three and when i'm ready to go it's a lot quicker to use the monopod than it is to use a tripod so i can just drop it down make sure i don't hit my head and then i'm a sort of a way to go and as i've talked about the other advantage is just that quick release plate you know if i wanted to let's say that there's a bird in flight and i wanted to quickly take the camera off it's just a bit easier i can just pull this off and start shooting and away i go so you know that's a real benefit of this quick release plate i can just drop it on there and away i go so i've been talking about a lot of positives but there are some negatives and i'll mention them to you now the first one and probably the most obvious one is that with these monopods you can't leave them upright like this and then go and grab a drink or something to eat or do something else because if you let it go it just falls over and there you go all your lens and camera crash into the ground so obviously with a tripod i can just mount it onto the gimbal lock it into place and there it is and i can go and do whatever i want to do so you know i would have to if i was in the bush and i needed to grab something or do something i've actually got to lay it down onto the ground not an issue all the time however if you've got say wet ground you've got rocks you introduce the chance of scratching your lens and your camera you know and that's not ideal so that is one downside to this monopod the second disadvantage i guess of a monopod is it just doesn't make sense if you're shooting in a blind or a setup where you've got to wait for a bird you know when i'm sitting in blinds and waiting and it's just on the tripod head i can just sort of sit there relax and wait however if i was using a monopod i'd have to be sitting there holding on to the thing the whole time it's no good laying it on the ground waiting for a bird to come then popping it up and taking the shots it just wouldn't work another downside to the monopod and it goes for tripods as well is just the weight of it you're adding an additional 1.25 kilos to your kit now if you've got a really light kit like my r5 and 100 to 500 that only weighs around 2 kilos so it doesn't make a lot of sense to then add an additional 1.25 kilos to that to wander around in the bush when i can just hand hold it quite easily all right so who is this monopod for well it's basically for anybody that's got a heavy kit such as this and walks and shoots so if you're walking around in the bush and you need some form of stabilization then a monopod makes a lot of sense it's much easier than lugging around the tripod so in the future if i'm just walking around in the bush and i want to take my heavy lens then i'll definitely be using a monopod such as this and also that foot is pretty awesome next to the lake however if you're sitting in a blind or you do sit-ups sometimes like i do then of course i'm going to use the tripod because i need to sit there for long periods and i need the tripod to take the weight and if you're just walking around in the bush with a light kit then just hand holding is the obvious choice you don't even need a monopod or a tripod and i was interested to know what you my audience um use so i've put up a poll and i was really surprised with the results as you can see on the screen over 70 of people actually just handheld and only around 10 of people actually use monopods and i guess that just shows how far we've come in regards of image stabilization and how light kits are becoming it's just getting easier and easier to handhold which is a good thing so as you can see 10 percent of people do use a monopod and if you're in the market for a monopod or you think it might be handy i highly encourage you to google and have a look for this ifootage cobra 2. i've been extremely impressed with it and i'm sure if you were to pick up this one you'd be as impressed as i was so thanks again to ifootage for sending me this monopod to test i had a lot of fun doing it if you enjoyed the video obviously give me that thumbs up subscribe if you want to see more of these videos and thanks again to all my lovely members that support the channel until the next video take care and see you later and then on the shoulder and sort of off i went so oop hang on the back of my head so you know i was able to throw it on the back of my shoulder here and just wander around and then put it deep if you see a bird on a nice perch and that's often the key in the bushes if you see a bird land on a nice perch on its own can't even finish sentence

Channel: Duade Paton

Views: 15,234

Keywords: Bird Photography, Bird Photography Tips & Tricks, Wildlife Photography Tips, Telephoto Zoom Lenses, Canon R5, Canon RF tips and tricks, Canon R6, best kit for bird photography, Canon 1dx, Canon 1d-x, Canon DSLR Camera For Wildlife, Best DSLR 2021, How to photograph birds, Used DSLR, Canon RF100-500, Canon EF500 F4 IS II, Telephoto lens for wildlife, EF500 F4, iFootage Cobra 2 C180 II, Monopod, iFootage Monopod for wildlife, Mononpod or tripod for wildlife, iFootage

Id: I9uMYFBZQPI

Length: 23min 15sec (1395 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 15 2021