Bogen/Manfrotto MonoPod

[Mike Davis]

Just bought a Bogen/Manfrotto 676B Digi MonoPod.. Very interesting. I have 5 Tripods, and used an old model Bogen MonoPod for years.

What is nice about this one is it's body is not round. It has three flat sides and three curved sides. Great for digging into sand or soft soil, then super for leaning against rails, etc with the flat parts. In a corner rail situation, two of the flat sides come into play and make a strong platform.

The round portions actually project into ruts or "V" structures..

A great idea and a very good price. Got this one for $32.

 

[Gene Moore]

Made all of metal....better than a nine iron?

I hope not ....otherwise you've got a nice portable lightning rod. I have one also (home made), but always get nervous about using it in electrifying situations. I found a rubber foot for mine...in the end it probably won't matter much though.

 

[fplowman]

My footage went to s#$t when I started shooting on my bogen monopod. Although they are alot nicer for deploying in a heated chase, So I left it at home to insure I didnt use it.

Ill stick with my bogen tripod, although a pain in the ass. A one in a million shot isnt worth a $90 monopod.

 

[Blake Michaleski]

I would assume he's using the monopod for stills. I dont think I'd want to use a mono pod for video.

I rarely shoot video anyway (except in hurricane chasing), but when I do, its usually on a tripod while I continue to fire off stills.

 

[fplowman]

I would assume he's using the monopod for stills. I dont think I'd want to use a mono pod for video.

I rarely shoot video anyway (except in hurricane chasing), but when I do, its usually on a tripod while I continue to fire off stills.

Eh.. maybe your right.. what was i thinking??? lol Carry on.

 

[Gene Moore]

I came to the conclusion that a monopod probably doesn't help for "my" still photography. I wasn't seeing much if any improvement in my slow shots. The camera can still move in a horizontal manor. During a typical 1/15th of a second exposure the camera probably only moves in one direction anyway. So what's the difference if it moves up - down or side to side. Monopods should be made of wood or some other non-metal material since we tend to grip it closely. As opposed to tripods where most of us tend to stand back a couple of feet. What happens if lightning hits the tripod, does it help to be two feet away? I had a lightning paranoid friend that made a sweet chase tripod out of an old oak surveyors tripod. That said, they have to be found used, new they are very expensive.

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

Made all of metal....better than a nine iron?

I hope not ....otherwise you've got a nice portable lightning rod. I have one also (home made), but always get nervous about using it in electrifying situations. I found a rubber foot for mine...in the end it probably won't matter much though.

I think the BBC had a documentary about lightning in which they proved with a high-voltage spark generator that the type of material (i.e., metal vs. wood or other non-conductive materials) is not terribly important when it comes to strike probability -- they claimed that the only important factor is the relative elevation of the item compared to the elevation of everything else around. It seems kinda counterintuitive to me that wood is as likely to get struck as metal, but the experiments they did were pretty convincing.

Any kind of tripod or monopod is a bad idea in an electrical storm, which is always why I'm scared stiff when I have to haul one out for a longer exposure.

 

[Oscar van der Velde]

For lightning it doesn't matter a thing. If there were a significant difference between using a metal and a rubber tripod, it would mean that in the latter case YOU would be the most likely struck because you're more conducting than the tripod. Maybe it does matter a bit when lightning strikes nearby and ground current wants to travel via the tripod to your arm and back to your leg, though.

Really the better thing you should worry about is to go back into the safety of your car before you get too much exposed to the risk of a strike. In that respect, it helps greatly if the tripod isn't taking away from the already limited time available for photography, so test the ease of use and reliability of the leg locks, first of all! (or leave the tripod extended in the car) The choice of feet is also important for a optimal stability. Next time I buy a tripod I would look more for spiky feet for in the field, and high friction rubber feet for smooth surfaces inside (hard plastic on my Bogen 3001 / Manfrotto 190B doesn't help stability much in either situation).

Oscar

 

[Dan Robinson]

Oscar's right. Lightning is a large-scale discharge that is not influenced by small objects. The principle of 'attraction' when it comes to lightning is limited to the distance equal to the object's vertical demensions. For a four-foot high tripod to attract a lightning channel, the lightning channel would need to be initially less than four feet away. For this to happen, the stepped leader would have to be descending in its final stages directly overhead of the photographer. The stepped leader doesn't 'see' the objects on the ground as it is initiating in the cloud and propagating earthward, all it sees is the 'ground' itself or more specifically the 'shadow' of opposing charge on the ground induced by the storm overhead. That 'target' location is a function only of where the storm is located overhead.

The spark generator experiments are simulating that scenario, that is, a stepped leader that is already at point-blank range above the subject. It isn't taking into account that this controlled scenario won't happen but one in a million times for the average person. If the stepped leader is not already a few meters above your head, nothing will attract it to you nor send out an upward leader to meet it. If the stepped leader is going to connect to a leader less than four feet away from you, then you're going to feel it the same whether it jumps to your tripod or not!

The real danger, as mentioned, is being out in the open to begin with. The material your tripod is made of will not make you any more or less safe if you are out where lightning is coming down.

 

[Gene Moore]

I'll take issue with a few things said so far. First, it does make a huge difference (life or death) to be a few feet from the main channel of a lightning strike. Second, modern science insists in perpetuating this horrible misconseption that lightning is drawn to higher objects.

Isolating oneself some distance from the main channel can make the difference in getting burned, or exploding internally from the liquid temperature rise in the body as the current passes through. When I was young lightning came into our house and sliced an electrical wire running down the wall. That is, the bolt came into the house through an open screen porch. I was but a few feet away when the bolt hit with its associated blinding blue-white flash. I was not injured what so ever. Even at that age I had to ask why the lightning bypassed 30 ft high power poles and the top of the house to come inside. On chases I've seen hundreds of bolts not select the tops of the hills, but hit in the valleys. Likewise I've seen lightning hit numerous times in ditches where the ground was the lowest in the area. I'm not saying lightning does not hit the high spots like buildings with antennas on top, but I am saying there is a large deviation from this rule. Probably the most vivid example of this occurred when we lived in the Sacramento mountains of southern New Mexico. We build a house at just under 8,000 ft MSL. It was a common occurrence to see lightning pass by our house on the way down to strike in the bottom of the canyon hundreds of feet below. Of course since this was a pine forest the lightning had many targets of opportunity to select.

One of the issues with a solid metal tripod is the buildup of charge on it during a storm, especially under the anvil canopy where there is a huge potential. I've watched friends struggle to reset a tripod, but couldn't because they kept getting hit with bright blue sparks as they reached for it. I've never seen this happen with a wood or rubber foot insulated tripod. I have been shocked off my tripod when it's wet though, or I set it up in tall wet grass. As for Dan's remark that we shouldn't be out in the open during as storm....yeah right but. In early June I saw hundreds of chasers on that south moving supercell from Dimmitt standing out in the lightning. I guess this will happen until someone gets wacked (again).

 

[Gene Moore]

Question for the group

I've tried to make a case against using a metal rod near a storm, others say it won't matter the danger is the same regardless. This invites a question that is related, but perhaps should be a new thread....if I get a response.

I discussed the situation where it helped to distance ourselves from the main channel. That said, what of the bolts that contain numerous small discharges, sometimes covering an area of hundreds of sq meters around the strike. I have images of this and so do others, but this does not always happen. In this case even being near the bolt would guarantee getting hit. My question is this, what determines if a bolt takes on this multiple strike character as opposed to a single channel. I went back through my images and it seems most occurred over wet ground, would this matter?

Example where the center bolt has the numerous small channels: http://chaseday.com/PHOTOSHP/lightning/arbuckle-1a.jpg