If you have to shoot any event, portrait, etc. a really strong tripod setup can save the day.  You are not lugging the weight of the camera around the entire time and it can free you up to eat candy bars and gulp down Miller Lite while on a professional shoot.  OK, not really.  But you get what I am saying.  A tripod can really make a difference.  So what happens when you take a regular tripod and throw in some really cool improvements to make it even more usable?

To date, all of the tripods that I have owned have been the el cheapo brand that I have picked up at the local store.  Not that there is anything wrong with them at all.  They certainly have served their purpose and I feel as if I have certainly gotten my moneys worth from using them.  But recently, I have been using a new setup and it has made a world of difference.

This setup is a combination of a Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod, Manfrotto Joystick head,  and the JustRite  Bracket.  Let me tell you, I love this setup.  It has made everything extremely easy. Here are a few quick pictures I took the other day when testing out some video with the Nikon D90:

(Note my daughter’s Disney princess tent in the background!)

The entire setup is extremely light.  Folding the legs in to quickly move from one spot to another is great and works like a charm.  Positioning the camera to just about any angle is great.  The pistol grip feels far more natural to maneuver than the traditional tripod I have been used to.  For those want to experiment more with their DSLR and video, this tripod is perfect for that. It lets you get the camera in many different angles than I think the traditional tripod would.  In addition to the pistol grip being as flexible as it is, the legs are great, too.  I have had them every which way so far and its been wonderful.  I have had the thing sprawled out in the kitchen with one leg in a kitchen drawer!

Recently, I shot an event using this tripod setup.  Given where I was, I was using my Nikon D700 and Nikon 70-200mm lens, which is not the lightest camera setup.  With the camera mounted on the tripod, it was so easy to move around, take off the tripod when I needed to, and set it back up.  When I was done, my arms where not totally worn out from toting around the camera all day.  On top of that, I had a much steadier shot.

The strength of this setup for us has been the JustRite bracket, especially when it comes to shooting weddings.  With the lights and camera in place, it is super quick and easy to roll the camera to portrait and then back again.

The main drawback, and probably the only drawback I have found so far, would have to be the price.  With the legs being $400, the head being $115, and the bracket being $385, you are looking at forking out $900 just for a tripod.  Shooters on a budget probably wont dig the idea of a $900 tripod, but if you can swing it, you won’t be disappointed.

A lot of the photos and tutorials, and to some extent the resources, have a serious tone to them.  Last night I decided to have a bit of fun and what better way than to create a project which enables you to laugh at yourself? Creative self-portraits are fun, but can be a little tricky.  Resources are important, however, a plan is even more critical to your success.

First, here are the items I used:

• Nikon D80
• Sigma 18-200mm
• SB800 Speedlight
• Tripod
• Two different outfits
• Giggling daughter (optional)

The first piece is to have a plan.  Think of a theme.  Think about how the image will come across.  You do that anyway (or you should) when you take pictures any other time, so this should be no different.  In fact, here is where it is more important because you are telling a story with the images you are creating.

I was initially inspired by fellow creative Kriegs who setup a self-portrait shot in a pool setting.  The photo portrayed him sitting on the edge of the pool with his feet in the water.  He brought in another photo of him as if he was about to push himself into the water.  I thought it was a really neat shot and thought that I could try something similar.  But I have no pool and if I did, I wouldn’t want to just duplicate what he did.  Being limited in what I could actually do at the time I wanted to do it, I thought about something in the living room.  I wanted to portray two sides of my personality, one serious and one playful.  So that would need two different sets of clothes.  The idea came to me about sitting down trying to read but being bothered by my own practical joke side.

With an idea in place, it was time to put it into action.

Since I was setting up in the living room, I setup the tripod where I wanted.  I took a few quick test shots to make sure the settings were what I wanted.  Then it was time to put on outfit #1 (serious mode).

I will be the second to admit that I am still learning when it comes to taking my D80 off auto and moving into more manual settings (the first person is my friend Dave).  Would you be surprised to know that up until last night, I did not know how to set the timer on the camera, or if I would even be able to do that.  So let’s start with that first.

A quick plug to The Complete Guide to the Nikon D80, who offers an extremely wonderful resource on the D80 camera.  For those who want a manual for their camera, I would start there.

On the top of the camera, you will need to locate the frame advance button.  Press it until you see the timer indicator.

The camera will also allow you to change the timing of the shots, but I found that 10 seconds was enough for me.  I pressed the button to fire off a shot, which triggered the timer, and then ran around to the couch to try and look somewhat serious.

The next shot, with outfit #2 (not-so-serious mode), took a few tries to get correct.  Obviously I am standing over the other me and looking down, so I wanted to make sure that everything was as seamless as possible.  For example, I tried this with another position in the living room, and the me that was standing up was not directly looking at the me sitting down.  So it took some planning and going back and forth to and from the camera to check the image.  The standing shot needed my eyes looking down at the me sitting.  I also needed to have the brown bag close enough to the other me so that it would make sense what I was doing.  I actually had to take this shot about 9 times to get the position and lighting correct.  When I was done, I had the following two images:

Since I used a tripod when taking the shots, merging the two images in Photoshop is relatively easy.  I opted to use the first image as the base image and the second one was imported into the first.  I then took the photo of me standing and trimmed away the background.  There were some slight lighting differences in the two so I used a combination of levels & brightness/contrast adjustments to match them up the best that I could.  The merged image was as follows:

Notice that I also did some slight cropping and resizing.  In the photo of me sitting down, you can see that I am wearing the same black Nike shorts as I am standing up.  So I cropped that out and sized the photo up just a tad so you can’t see them.

We all know that I seem to be unable to stay completely away from Photoshop and knowing that, you can understand why I kept going with the post-processing of the image.  I made a copy of the entire image and then pasted that into a new layer in a new group.  This way I have the original merged layers (if I want them) and can continue to edit with a new group using a copy of the merged photo as a base.

I copied the merged photo into a new layer and converted it to black and white using “Desaturate” (Control + Shift + U).  I changed the blending mode to multiply.  I also brought out the colors of the brown paper bag and my watch to help punch up some of the colors.  I also made a copy of the black and white layer (with blending mode again set to multiply) and applied a Gaussian Blur to it.  After that, I trimmed away me from the image so that only the background was left.

The next step involved applying some subtle textures to the image from Ghostbones and Paul Grand.  The last step was to add one final adjustment layer for curves to help accentuate the final image.

Feel free to drop a comment here or on the actual Flickr page.