Digital Focus: All About Tripods, Best Camera Settings

The best tripods for digital cameras, optimal settings for photos, soundtracks for home videos.

Dave Johnson

Feature: What You Should Know About Tripods

There's nothing quite as impressive as seeing a professional photographer shooting wild lions through a 3-foot-long lens, the massive camera perched on a tripod big enough to stop a charging rhino (indeed, that may be the tripod's backup function, considering where the photographer is). Sights like that inspired me to pursue photography as a teenager. But a lot of folks assume they don't really need a tripod since their digital camera is smaller and lighter than typical 35mm SLRs. And tripods are "serious" gear anyway--only pros need them.

Nothing could be further from the truth. You can find yourself in situations that need a tripod just as easily with a digital camera as with a film camera, and I've found that tripods have improved my shots more times than I can count. So this week let's take a good, hard look at this mysterious three-legged camera gadget.

When Tripods Attack

A tripod is a tool that helps steady the camera, allowing you to shoot sharp photographs in a variety of conditions that might otherwise blur your images. Specifically, you want the services of a tripod when you can't shoot at a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action. Very long focal lengths--like what you'd get from an add-on telephoto lens--may require a tripod. Low-light situations, such as evening and night photography, benefit from a tripod as well.

Here's a little test: What shutter speed does your camera want to use? If your camera can only muster 1/30 of a second or longer in a given shooting situation, then a tripod is essential. In general, you can hand-hold at 1/60 of a second at moderate focal lengths without a problem. If you zoom way in with a 3X or 4X optical zoom, though, you'll need faster shutter speeds to freeze the action--you may need 1/100 or 1/250 to avoid a blurry picture.

Traveling Light

Not all tripods need to be so large and heavy that they qualify as deadly weapons. Personally, I have two: a lightweight model that I hardly notice in my hands, and a heavy monster that could be used for weight training.

In general, the heavier your tripod, the better. The function of a tripod is to anchor the camera, and a heavy tripod is simply more stable than a lighter model. Heavy tripods protect cameras from vibration, wind buffeting, and other environmental factors that can shake a camera during exposure.

Of course, this is where having a lightweight digital camera can come in handy. A lighter camera puts fewer demands on the tripod, so you can get away with a lighter tripod than someone who needs to support a goliath, all-metal 35mm SLR.

So what should you buy? Get a tripod that's heavy enough to adequately support your camera outdoors, in a moderate breeze. Also keep in mind that you'll need to carry your tripod around--if it's too heavy you'll probably end up leaving it at home. The name of the game is compromise. I recently visited Honduras and, since I was already carrying hundreds of pounds of scuba gear and three cameras, I opted to leave my tripod behind. It was a stupid decision: Not having a tripod prevented me from shooting any late afternoon or night photos.

Tripod Anatomy

Visit any camera shop and you'll find a dozen models to choose from, made by such popular tripod manufacturers as Bogen Photo Corp., Gruppo Manfrotto, and Slik.

Your tripod should be sturdy and rigid, yet also set up and break down quickly. Some tripods use quick-release hinged latches that let you open and close the legs rapidly. When it comes to extending the legs of a tripod, there's almost nothing faster than these latches--but they can't support as much weight as screw-type leg locks. You might want something stronger; it depends largely upon how heavy your digital camera is and what kind of photography you plan to do.

The bottoms of the legs come in different flavors as well: Some have pins or spikes that dig into the ground; most have flat bottoms with rubber pads that grip both indoor and outdoor surfaces.

One of the most important parts of a tripod is the head assembly. While some folks might think this is about as exciting as how a car's transmission works, it's important to know that there are several kinds of head assemblies. You can buy the tripod and head separately at many camera shops, so you can get exactly what you want in both components.

A ball head lets the camera "float" on top of a big ball bearing. A single control loosens and tightens the head in every direction. This is a good choice if you like to quickly re-position the camera.

However, I prefer three-way heads, which provide three separate, screw-like controls to tighten each of the three X, Y, and Z axes. The advantage? It's easier to more precisely control your camera. Suppose the camera is cock-eyed so that the horizon isn't level in the picture. You can use one of the head controls to level the camera without worrying about twisting it around in the other directions at the same time, as you would with a ball head.

Quick Getaway

The slowest part of setting up a tripod is connecting the camera to the tripod's head assembly. All tripods use a standard 1/4-inch screw to connect to the bottom of the camera, which means you can use the same tripod for all of your cameras and camcorder. Unfortunately, threading it in place eats up precious moments as you watch the space aliens experimenting on a cow in a deserted field.

Instead, look for a tripod that uses a quick-release camera plate. That's a little pad that screws into the bottom of the camera and stays there. You can leave the plate connected to your camera all the time, even when you have no intention of using the tripod. When it is time to shoot that charging rhino, the camera plate snaps and locks into place in the tripod head assembly in just a second or two. A flick of your thumb on a quick-release lever releases the camera again when you're done with the tripod. You can buy several spare camera plates and attach them to your digital camera, 35mm camera, and camcorder, making all of your gadgets tripod-ready.

Dave's Favorites: Homemade Video Soundtracks

I started making my own home videos back in the dark ages of computing. In 1990 I was on the cutting edge, using a Commodore Amiga with a video overlay gadget to add titles, graphics, and transitions to video I had shot with a camcorder. For a soundtrack, I'd usually just mix some combination of The Call, Peter Himmelman, and Neil Young tunes together to set the mood.

These days I'd rather that my music were a bit more subtle. Instead of using a recognizable commercial song in my home videos, I like to produce movies with instrumental, mood-setting music. Since I've been using SmartSound's Sonicfire Pro, I've been getting compliments from people who were getting really tired of hearing Throwing Muses and Dead Can Dance songs in all my videos.

Sonicfire Pro is a royalty-free music generator, which means you can use the music made by Sonicfire for any project, personal or commercial, and you don't have to worry about getting angry letters from Metallica's lawyers. And unlike music editing software that requires some skill to craft samples into coherent songs, Sonicfire is great even for the musically challenged. Just choose a musical theme (action, inspirational, spiritual, dramatic, and so on), tell the program how long it should run, and Sonicfire automatically builds your soundtrack.

After you finish producing a movie in your favorite video editor, you can load it into Sonicfire to apply the soundtrack. By dragging a timeline control around, you can jump directly to specific scenes and assign musical themes. Sonicfire is very good at smoothly transitioning from one style of music to another, and there are few limitations on length. The same musical theme can be 10 seconds or 5 minutes long, and Sonicfire handles all the technical details of making it sound great. When your soundtrack is done, you can save it as an audio file and re-produce your movie, laying it in an unused audio track.

Sonicfire Pro isn't cheap; it's available from SmartSound for $349 with a small collection of music themes. Additional music CDs in dozens of categories are available for about $60 each. But if you're looking for an easy way to make great-sounding digital movies, you'd be hard-pressed to do better than Sonicfire Pro.

Q&A: Ideal Camera Settings

I recently bought a Fuji MX1200 digital camera. What settings should I use to get the highest quality pictures? The quality options are normal, basic, and fine. For file size, I can choose from 640 by 480 or 1280 by 960. As for sharpness, there's normal, soft, or hard. Which combination of these do you recommend for the best picture?

--Len Coburn, Dayton, Ohio

Good question, Len. It's not always obvious what the right choices are. The image quality setting, for instance, controls how aggressively the camera will compress the image in JPEG format. The higher the quality, the larger the file size. If you can live with storing fewer images on your memory card, choose fine, the highest quality setting on your camera. Because of the way camera manufacturers name these settings, sometimes it isn't clear which quality setting is best. Which is better, for instance--normal or basic? Check your camera manual for an explanation.

As for resolution, if you expect to crop your images or print them on photo-quality ink-jet paper, use the camera's highest setting. In your case, it's 1280 by 960 pixels.

Finally, I recommend sticking with normal sharpness. The soft setting takes the edge off sharp edges in the image and can lead to a soft-focus or slightly blurry look. The hard setting can add a cold, artificial-looking edge to parts of the picture, and that's just as bad.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $10 and $100.

A gentle reminder, folks: We disqualify some really wonderful pictures every week because the submissions don't follow the rules. Be sure to include everything we ask for in your e-mail message, including a description of your picture and your complete contact information, or your entry is wasted!

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering please read the full description of the contest rules and regs.

This Week's Hot Pic: "A Peek At the Peak," by Mike Romero, Colorado Springs, Colorado

I'm jealous. Like me, Mike lives in Colorado Springs, home of Colorado's famed Garden of the Gods. It's full of rock formations that erupt out of the ground, framing a beautiful, snow-capped mountain range off in the distance. But Mike avoided all of the cliched compositions and found a unique way to photograph Pike's Peak. To make the shot, he used a DV camcorder--the JVC GR-DVL805U. If you inspect the photo carefully, you'll see a lot of digital noise, especially in the edge of the rocks that frame the mountaintop.

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