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Ultimate Travel Video Monopod Setup

ultimate travel video monopod setup

The video is about a travel monopod setup for filming. The monopod being discussed is the iFootage Cobra 3, which comes with a foot pedal that allows for fluid movements. The setup also includes a lightweight fluid head from SmallRig. The monopod is compact and made of carbon fiber and metal, and the feet can be removed. The fluid head has a bubble level, knobs for tilting and panning, and a lever with a telescoping feature. The setup provides stabilization for video recordings without the need for a handheld gimbal.

Transcription was done by Descript‘s automated transcription services which means it’s an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain spelling, grammar, and other errors, and is not a substitute for watching the video.

What I’m showing you right here is the ultimate travel video monopod setup. You see, I’ve been doing a lot of videos while traveling lately, and I’ve. Compact rigs. I’ve tried not so compact rigs and now I’m going with so. Well, this, that is quite perfect. So here’s why. What I have here is the eye footage, COBRA three.

This one has the foot pedal. The foot pedal means I can step on the pedal and then I can actually pivot the the entire monopod in one shot. So like, if I step on the foot pedal, I can unlock the base and then I can actually pivot and do any fluid movements that I wanna do, and then I could release.

And it locks it back in place and stands up straight. You can see it is kind of wobbly. Of course, any mono pilot feet will be mo will be wobbly. But what is really cool is how compact this is. So if I am out doing a video and I need to take up minimal space, the monopod aspect means I can take up minimal space, but it also means that I can actually sort of let it sit if there’s no other movement or nobody bumping.

And it will actually capture perfectly steady without me having to hold the camera myself, having to use a gimbal or anything like that. The one downside of this monopod, in my opinion, is that it is still two feet long. It’s still two feet long, when fully compressed, when fully like. Into itself, right?

This is as short as it gets. However, as you saw in the beginning of this video, the foot comes off with a quick release, right? As does the video head. Now, the video head is not included with the monopod. I had to get that separate, and I went, I’ll show you what I got in a second, but let me just extend this real quick.

To unlock either the feet or unlock the ball head. All I have to do is pull down the quick release and take. The whole video head. So even though it’s two feet long, I can actually take off the feet and I can take off the head and throw that into a separate bag or case when I need to to do that quick release.

Brilliant. And it also works in a way where when it’s unlocked, it just stays unlocked until you put the piece right back in. Then it locks itself the feet the same way and the feet, let me put this down for a second. So here’s the feet, right? Here’s the foot pedal. You’ve pushed the foot pedal, and then you can.

You know, pivot how you need to, and then when you lift a [00:03:00] foot, foot pedal and get it, it gets back into the sys perfectly straight and is locked back in place. The feet are metal. Everything here is metal. There is really like very minimal plastic like this piece to sort of tighten some of the bolts.

This is plastic. But the rest of it is basically metal. The feet can actually go down and you could also raise up the feet. So I can go all the way up, I can go down and of course I can completely remove the feet and just use the monopod. I can take the little rubber nub here on the, on the bottom, and I could.

Put it on the bottom here. And now I just have a monopod where I can leave the feet on. And by the way, this is extremely light when there’s, when the feet on aren’t on it, because this is carbon fiber and this is metal. Okay, so let’s move on now from this monopod, which is fantastic. By the way. This head is the small rig, lightweight fluid head.

A fluid head means that when you pan, or when you tilt, it has a fluid [00:04:00] motion. It’s not ajar. Motion. Okay. It makes it so that when you’re doing pans and tilts and stuff in video, you’ve got this fluid movement. Whereas with photography, it doesn’t make a difference if you have a fluid motion cuz you’re not capturing the motion on video, you’re just capturing on stills.

This one, it has one knob to un loosen basically the. Feature, there is a small bubble level, kind of a pointless bubble level, and it’s also on a monopod, so it doesn’t make a difference. And then it has another knob knob right here, which allows me to go up and down for the tilt. So I have a pan, I have a tilt, I have this, which is actually to unlock the the how this can go up or down, forward to back.

So if I need to have more, Over how close or far back the the camera or the lens, whatever is mounted is I can control that from here. And then I have this, which actually allows me to twist the mount up here. And the reason why is that is so important is because typically with the fluid head, you’re mounting the lens and then need an adapter to, if you wanna mount the camera to it.

What this allows me to do is do one or the other without an adapter. So it basically has two pivot. One is the pan feature and the other is the pan for the actual camera or lens being mounted. I don’t need an, an extra adapter. And then of course it has, this is ARCA Swiss. So it has the clamp to actually clamp down on the Arca Swiss.

Finally, is this, this is the lever, which you can have it, however, whatever angle you need it to be. But what’s so great about this lever and what makes it more compact, especially for travel, is you can see there’s like this telescoping feature. I can unlock it and condense it, and now when I’m traveling, it takes up far less [00:06:00] space in the bag or.

So this is why I really love this one, especially cuz I’m not doing videos every single day forever. So I didn’t need something super heavy duty. I needed something that was just perfect for travel and this did the job. So again, the setup is the eye footage, Cobra three with the foot pedal and the carbon fiber version.

They also have an aluminum version of this monopod and then the small rig, lightweight fluid head. That’s the setup. To me. This is the perfect compact travel video stabilization setup that is not a handheld gimbal solution. If I wanted handheld, I would’ve gone with a nice gimbal, but I want something that I could plant and just stand here and.

Either be on camera or record wherever I’m recording, without me having to hold the camera and see all that shake and whatnot because Ibis and, and Imageners stabilizer and lenses, they’re, they’re good, but they’re not as good as just stabilizing and they’re not as good as a gimbal. So this does the job.

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Comments

3 responses to “Ultimate Travel Video Monopod Setup”

  1. Reid Elsie Avatar

    This monopod setup looks useful for travel, but I’m not sure if it’s worth it for me since it’s still a bit long when packed. The foot pedal is a nice feature though.

  2. I think the fluid head seems good for smooth movements, but I don’t do much video work, so maybe this isn’t something I’d need. Still, it’s interesting to learn about.

  3. Benjamin80 Avatar

    The setup sounds compact and practical for someone who travels a lot. But I wish the monopod could get shorter when fully compressed. Thanks for the explanation.

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