When I first purchased my Gitzo Series 3 monopod I needed a head to hold the camera. At the time I selected a Really Right Stuff BH-40 mid-sized ball head. The ball head was amazing and was perhaps the finest engineered photography accessory I have ever seen in my life.

It works perfectly securing the camera or the lens. The only issue I have with it is the fact that it is too versatile for what I need. The BH-40 was designed to be a tripod ball head. It is designed to adjust on any axis.

The problem with the monopod is that I really didn’t need that kind of flexibility. What I really need is a smaller head with forward/aft adjustments. The other axis is easily adjusted by leaning the monopod rather than adjusting the ball head and trying to keep the monopod perpendicular.

The BH-40 ball head is larger and heavier than what I need for a monopod. Reluctantly I began searching for a monopod head to replace the ball head. I should note that in no way am I unsatisfied with the quality or workings of the BH-40. On the contrary, it is so good that I am now planning to replace my tripod with a new one just so that I can use the BH-40.

As I began searching for a new monopod head I again turned my attention to one of my favorite photography accessory vendors. I went to the Really Right Stuff web site to see if perchance they made a head specifically for monopods.

After perusing their web site I finally found what I was looking for, the MH-01. I say perusing the site not because it is hard to find things there. Rather there is so much good information that I find myself spending an inordinate amount of time reading.

The web site not only has product information but also contains several articles about choosing the right ball head, tripod, camera plates etc. This information should not be overlooked as it gives the reader a very good idea of what they really need and more importantly offers suggestions for accessories or configurations you may not have thought of.

After going through the various configurations I settled on the MH-01 LR with B2 AS II Clamp. I selected this particular configuration, as I liked the idea of having a quick release clamp with the monopod head.

Most of time when I am shooting with the tripod I am doing so at sporting events. When I have to change cameras or lenses I like the idea of just pulling a quick release rather than rotating a knob to remove the camera from the head.

I am usually doing this by touch and since the fore/aft adjustment is already a knob I didn’t really want to confuse the two knobs during a shoot. It’s more personal preference than anything. On the BH-40 ball head I went with the B2-Pro II clamp because I wanted the security of a knob for keeping the camera attached to the head.

The great thing about Really Right Stuff is that no matter which one you choose it is easily adapted to another clamp with just one Allen screw. So if I decide later that I really like the knob configuration of the clamp I can interchange it with the BH-40 to give me the setup I want.

The MH-01 Monopod Head is of the same high quality as the other Really Right Stuff products. It is precisely machined to very tight tolerances. From a user’s perspective it feels well built and works just as you would expect.

With the cost of digital SLR cameras and lenses the last thing I wanted was to trust a cheap ball head to secure my equipment. With Really Right Stuff that is never a concern. The clamps and the head are secure and remain so in almost any condition.

The knobs and adjustments are easy to grasp and turn even when wearing gloves during cold weather. This is especially helpful when in the field and you need to make a quick adjustment to capture the shot.

Overall I have been extremely impressed with the MH-01 and would gladly recommend this product to anyone who is looking for a monopod head that will securely hold your camera equipment. It’s manufactured to the highest quality making it a piece of equipment that will last a lifetime. This may very well be the only monopod head you will ever buy.

I’ve been a Nikon fan for several years. The cameras are always first rate and they have some of the best lenses in the business. But it is more than just hardware that keeps me coming back to this manufacturer.

Nikon has continuously been developing their software and web presence to add value to their product line. This coupled with their Nikon Schools educational arm provides a wealth of information on just on cameras but on camera techniques.

Today I received an email introducing another educational opportunity available. Nikon has developed an iPhone App called Nikon Learn & Explore. This free app provides access to articles and information from the Nikon educational archives.

The interface to the app is well laid out. You can select information by image with a matrix of photos displayed. Selecting a photo thumbnail displays a larger version of the picture as you would expect.

From there you can click on Info to get information about the photo including photographer name. You can also select View Article, which will show the article from Nikon World magazine that featured the photo. Where applicable there are also videos about the photo or the article.

Next to the Image tag on the main screen is a learn icon that provides Insights & Techniques including imaging editing, shooting techniques, and fundamentals of photography. These lessons are well done and very helpful.

The Nikon World magazine is a valuable tool and the app provides digital access to the information separated by issue.

The app is like having a desk reference and photography teacher right at your fingertips. It is a great app with a good interface and invaluable information. For anyone interested in taking pictures whether you use a Nikon camera or not you will find valuable information contained within it.

It’s interesting how the migration of photography from film to digital has changed the way we take and share pictures. During the film era I was very judicious of what I took pictures of. After all, I only had 24 or 36 shots per roll so I had to be careful in deciding what would be captured. It was always hit or miss as to whether the shot I just took would turn out the way I wanted or if it would be yet another failed attempt to capture what was in my mind’s eye.

After the film was developed, I would review the shots and pick out my favorites. The remainder of the pictures would go into a pile that would rarely be viewed again. There may be times where I might have a second set of images printed to send to parents or grandparents but mostly the pictures stayed in an envelope.

At some point my wife Trina decided to take up “scrapbooking”. She was going to take the hundreds or thousands of pictures we had taken in our lifetime and sort them assembling photo albums that could be looked at by friends and family.

The problem was that you had to be at the physical location of the pictures in order to enjoy looking at them. For parents and grandparents that meant that they rarely saw the pictures or if they did it was during a visit.

When digital pictures began to be prevalent, things substantially changed. The photographer had immediate feedback to determine whether the picture turned out or not. The number of pictures you could take was dependant on the size of your camera’s memory card.

With the continual reduction to the price of memory, camera photo cards became very inexpensive and hence people began taking a lot more pictures. Initially the digital pictures suffered from the same problem as their film counterparts. They were stored on a hard drive somewhere and rarely looked at.

As the Internet became more pervasive it became easier for people to keep in touch through email, social media sites, and via web sites. Before long people wanted to share their photos with others who were not necessarily close.

One such program that facilitated the sharing of photos was JAlbum. This software allows you to create on-line photo albums that can then be uploaded to a web site where anyone can view them.

JAlbum is written in Java and has been ported to several platforms including Windows, Linux, and Macintosh OS X. This makes it extremely valuable since it will run on any standard operating system the person may have.

Creating an online album is relatively simple with JAlbum. You simply select the images you want to include to decide where you want the album to be saved. JAlbum offers the ability to modify the look and feel of the album by using one of several themes or skins.

These skins modify the overall look of the photo album while keeping your pictures the same. There are skins that look like wedding albums, birthdays, and several color and sizes to give your album a unique look and feel.

Once you have decided on a skin and identified the photos that should be included in the album, the software allows you to generate the photo album. The software then creates the pages with the appropriate HTML and CSS values to produce a finished photo book.

You can provide JAlbum with the address of your web site and it can automatically update your web site with the new photos or if you don’t have your own web space the software can assist you with finding a place to host your photo album.

The software also allows you to share your album with other JAlbum users creating a photography community where you can find others who share your passion for photography or inspire you to create new and exciting pictures.

JAlbum is maintained with new versions coming quite regularly. The software updates are fairly simple to install and activate new software features. I use JAlbum quite often when I need to publish photos.

Two of the more popular online albums are Dakota’s soccer pictures and My Scrapbook. Now with JAlbum my pictures are no longer banished to a box or hard drive but are being shared with family and friends.

When I undertook an update to the look and feel of my Now Hitting web site that chronicles the history of the Arizona Diamondbacks I made a conscious decision to turn the home page into a revolving slide show of images I had collected over the first 12 years of the team’s existence.

I wanted this to give the visitor an idea of what they may have missed from the first dozen years of games played by the team. The issue I had was I needed a software application that would be graphics intensive yet allow for other content on subsequent pages.

The back-end of Now Hitting is the Joomla content management system. I chose this because of its power and ease of use. I also liked the idea that I could extend the product with new features as I deemed necessary.

It was this extensibility that was most important especially for the multimedia aspects I was planning for the home page. I perused the Joomla extension library, which has thousands of modules that can be installed to add specific functionality to a web site.

I tried several slideshow alternatives and always seemed to come away disappointed. They were either extremely slow or not robust enough to allow them to be used on a site that receives regular visitors during the baseball season.

I was about to give up and try something new when I came across an application that did exactly what I was looking for. SlideShowPro by Domney Design Inc is a Flash-based plug-in that will produce a slideshow for web-based sites.

It allows not only a rotating photo display but will also enable the use of video should I decide to expand the pictures to a more robust media type. Setting up the software was fairly straightforward.

In my case I purchased two different products. I ordered SlideShowPro for flash that allows the slideshows to be displayed using Adobe Flash. The second piece of software was the companion SlideShowPro Director that allows the slideshows to be created without having a full Flash development system.

In order to integrate SlideShowPro with Joomla I added the Joomla module EasySSP. This module provides a seamless integration of the SlideShowPro slideshows with Joomla. Once installed and configured it simply became a matter of defining the size of the slideshow component and pointing to the parameters file.

Within just a few short hours I went from a text based home page to an immersive experience that pictorially showed the progression of the Arizona Diamondbacks from expansion team to today.

I cannot recommend enough the SlideShowPro and EasySSP applications. It should be noted that SlideShowPro is licensed on a per domain basis so if you are like me and have multiple domains you will need a separate license for each one. After the success I have had with SlideShowPro I am now considering ways that will allow me to add this functionality to my other web sites.

I’ve found that a lot of my photography now consists of taking pictures at sporting events. Whether it is along the side of a baseball field or positioned near a soccer field, the shooting is of sports.

Because I cannot always be as close to the action as I would like, it has become a necessity to use a long lens to properly capture the action. The problem with these longer lenses is that they can be quite heavy.

Weight is not the only issue though. Since we live in Arizona where summer temperatures are consistently above 110 degrees, many of the sporting events are played at night away from the hot sun. Nighttime events have their own set of challenges especially when it comes to lighting.

Most of the venues are inadequately lit for photography requiring the use of slow shutter speeds and wide-open lenses. This of course makes photography a challenge and requires adapting to the environment.

Hand-held photography is difficult with the large lenses and low shutter speeds. Typically you would use a tripod to overcome these issues but tripods are forbidden in most sports venues. For this reason I chose a monopod.

The monopod allows for stability of the lens and provides the necessary support to allow for slower shutter speeds required for lowlight shooting modes.

As I began researching monopods I was amazed to find how many models there were and the variety of selection. Before long I was fairly confused and frustrated as it seemed that every new article I read contradicted what I had just read previously.

I finally made a decision selecting the Gitzo GM3551 Series 3 monopod. I selected this monopod for several reasons. Perhaps the most important aspect of this particular model was the sturdiness of the monopod. It is able to support up to 39 pounds well past what I would need with even the largest of lenses.

The Gitzo GM3551 includes five leg segments, which are adjusted with a twisting action at each joint. The segments slide easily and when locked into place they are very secure even with a fully loaded camera and lens attached.

The height can be adjusted from a minimum of 21 inches to a maximum of 75 inches. This is a fairly wide range and gives me an opportunity to adjust the monopod to the proper height whether I am sitting, kneeling or standing. The height adjustment can be made with one hand allowing me to cradle the camera equipment while I adjust the monopod. This is extremely valuable when patrolling the sideline of an event.

The GM3551 is a carbon fiber monopod. I choose carbon fiber for two reasons. First, it does not get extremely hot when working in the daytime. This is especially important in Arizona where metal tripods and monopods can cause serious burns after a few hours in the sun. Secondly, the carbon fiber monopod is extremely light. When the camera and lens is already quite heavy you begin to find any way you can to make your equipment as light as possible.

I have had the Gitzo GM3551 for a couple of months now and have found it to be durable and dependable in the field. It has allowed me to get the shots needed regardless of the environment or the lighting. While it cannot magically make your pictures better, it does give you the support necessary to make your shots clearer.