Hello and welcome. My name is Sara Nguyen, and I help make social and tech easier for awesome entrepreneurs like yourself. In this video, I’m going to go through different tripod options whether, you’re live streaming on Facebook, doing Instagram stories, what’s the best tripod and combination you can use to give you the best video.
I’m a big fan of having a tripod, because a lot of the times when you watch Facebook live streams, although there’s a lot of forgiveness in the quality of videos in general facebook live streams, a lot of people hold their phone in their hands. You can tell that right away, because there’s a little bit of a shake, and there’s a bit of a tremor in the video. If you have a tripod, you can mount your phone to it, and it’s much better than just holding it in your hand.
I always recommend with equipment, that you always use what you’ve got. Use what you’ve got or use what you’ve got access to. I’m going to go through a couple of options, so you can see what’s, I think, the best items in terms of tripods and pick which one works best for you.
So let’s get started. One of my favorite tripods, mini tripods, is this Manfrotto Mini Tripod. As you can see, it’s a beautiful tripod made by Manfrotto. I’m not sponsored by Manfrotto, although if Manfrotto, for some reason if you’re watching, feel free to send products my way. I am more than happy to review them, really love Manfrotto products. The quality and the build and just, I guess the craftsmanship in this tripod is amazing.
I love this tripod. It’s a great little desk tripod, and the thing with it is you can on the sides, so if you attach a phone mount to the tripod and then you attach your phone to the tripod, it’s great in the sense that you can (do whatever you want with it). Let us just demo it now, attach that there, tighten it there. If I touch my phone here, like that. With the Manfrotto, you can also turn it to the side so you can go horizontal, or you can have vertical as well.
I saw a video on this tripod and someone said that the legs, you can extend it. You don’t get a lot of height with this tripod, but I don’t think that’s what it’s for, it’s not meant to be one of their massive tripods. It’s just meant to give you different ranges, so you can go like this, or you can go like that. I’ve seen people will say, “You can extend out the legs and you can hold it and use it like a selfie stick,” and I guess so, you can use it like that?
The thing I like about this is that it’s a solid build, it’s beautiful, it’s high quality and it’s one of those tripods that, I won’t say won’t break, but it’s less likely to break because it’s just a really good quality tripod. I highly recommend this, one of the Manfrotto mini ones. It’s good for live streaming, compact, and it’s a really beautiful tripod.
What you saw me attach to this is a phone mount. Nine out of 10 times, you’re going to need a phone mount to attach to the tripod. This particular phone mount is one that I purchased off of Kickstarter. Yeah, I’m one of those people, I buy stuff off of Kickstarter, don’t judge me okay? This one is by Glif and they make quite a few Apple accessories.
This tripod, it’s the second generation of tripod mounts, sorry, that they have. It’s a really good little one. I’m pretty sure you can get it on Amazon and from their store as well. They have this quick release, which they say you can fit almost any phone, and look at all of that give there, there’s heaps of give.
The other tripod mount that I really like is Mefoto, this is one that I also like because it gives you the option of putting your phone in and you can turn it to have it vertical or you can turn it and have it horizontal as well. This is really handy whether you’re doing vertical videos with Instagram stories, or you just want a landscape and your having that option there is great.
This once again, solid build. I’m all for working within your budget, but I also believe at some point that cheap costs more, so I’m all for buying something right and buying it once, so these quality ones, this one is by Mefoto. It will last with you and it’s a really beautiful color and solid make as well. These are the two tripod mounts that I personally use and recommend.
We went through the Manfrotto tripod, and we went through the Mefoto phone mount and the Glif, their phone mount as well. The other tripod that I think is worth mentioning is this one, and it’s by PolarPro the Trippler tripod. This tripod, I really like because one, it’s phenomenal quality. You get this really solid build tripod. They talk about how it doubles as a selfie stick, and once again I’m going to attach the phone mount to it.
You’ve got it as a tripod and you can extend it as a selfie stick, attach your phone in there once again, like that. Then you’ve got a selfie stick. Let’s tighten that there. A nice little selfie stick, otherwise you can put it down, compact as a little desk tripod for your Facebook live stream as well. That’s what that looks like. A neat little tripod, really good quality. This have a feel of this base, it’s solid, it’s not going anywhere. It’s a rubber grip and it’s once again, just a good quality tripod for using with your smartphone.
My other favorite tripod, well, not a tripod, it’s a tripod option I guess. With live streaming, it’s good to be able to have lighting and a microphone to attach to your phone, so you can improve the quality of the overall video. This is a phone rig by Ulanzi. It’s pretty cheap, I got it off Amazon and it was about $17.00.
Let me show you why I like this as an option for mounting your phone. The grip that it has to put your phone in is quite solid. Put it in there and you twist it. There’s a quarter inch thread here, so technically you could attach it to your … Let me just get that, get this sitting flush, so that it doesn’t fold. It has a quarter inch thread, so you could attach it to a tripod, you could attach it to the PolarPro, like that, or you could hold it in your hand like so.
The other thing that it has is that it has two cold shoe mounts. With the cold shoe mounts, you could attach a light on one end, and then you could attach a microphone on the other end like that and turn your microphone to actually face the subject, that might help. This is really handy, really cheap, $17.00 you’ve got a lighting option, you’ve got your microphone, and you’ve got a really awesome setup that’s really quite cheap. Brilliant option.
They are really underrated, so I think holding it like this in your hand and if you’re going around shooting footage or if you’re doing it in selfie mode, it’s still better than holding the phone in your hand itself, and this way you’ve got the options of having accessories with your smartphone, so that’s another reason I really love it.
Not the last, but one of my new and newly favorite tripods is the Joby GorillaPod Mobile Rig. Joby, are a … Well, they make tripods and they’re kind of famous thanks to the likes of Casey Neistat. He really endorsed them and he uses them a lot with his videos. He made them famous with the Bendy Tripod.
They’re famous because you can bend their legs, you can bend the legs and you can, I don’t know, use it as a better grip, and you can also wrap it around like a tree. Why would you wrap your tripod and your camera around a tree? I don’t know, but you can do that because the flexibility, literally, of this tripod.
This tripod is made for DSLR cameras, hence why it’s a little bigger than this one here, but really solid tripod. I really also like it because it’s got the leveler here, so I can tell when I place my smartphone on it, if it’s level or not. Quality build, it’s going to last, and a really reliable tripod. I’ve seen in Casey Neistat’s videos, he smashes them quite a bit and he complains a little bit about the quality, but I have never had the same issues as him, and I think it’s a really, really good tripod.
The new one that they came out with is the GorillaPod Mobile Rig, and essentially it’s the tripod that you’ve just saw before, but it’s got arms and with the arms, it changes the game once again. Similarly, like the rig I showed you, you can add a light, you can add … Let me just switch you off here.
There’s another cold shoe mount, so you could technically add your microphone there. Then it’s got another arm here, and I can add either another light, or I could also add to the tripod. I could add another phone and I could live stream technically from two platforms, so maybe I could livestream on Facebook and I could do a YouTube live stream, and/or Instagram stories all at the same time.
I really like this tripod, I’ve been playing around with it and it’s just one of these really cool things that you can add lots of accessories to. You have this one … I hate the word one stop, but it’s like a one stop solution. You’ve got your phone, it’s mounted really solidly to the phone mount that it comes with. You can add a light, you can add your microphone, you can even add another phone.
With the mount as well, you can also go horizontal and under the arms, I could go vertical, and I can also go, which is pretty cool, down, so if I was shooting footage where I was doing demo’s, I needed people to see what my hands are doing, I could face it down. It bends all the way up as well to give it just different angles, which is pretty cool.
The thing I don’t like about it with the cold shoe mount, is that you really have to tighten it. This is with all cold shoe mounts, otherwise if you bend it down, as you saw, it would just topple over, but my new favorite, I think definitely my new favorite.
It looks pretty bad ass. It’s this really awesome rig, and the other thing, which I saw, is that you can detach the rig, so you can detach the bottom of it, and because it’s a quarter thread, you could attach this to a bigger tripod and use that as a stationary tripod solution as well. My new favorite, really, really love it.
The last tripod solution, and as you can see, I have a few tripods that I use all the time. Once again, my Manfrotto friends, it’s the Manfrotto Compact Advanced. Now, Manfrotto tripods are not cheap, but they are a very good quality, so I love in particular, this is the Compact Advanced, because this goes 165 centimeters high, so I’m able to get the camera at eye level for really tall people.
This is great in that sense, I don’t have to worry about it not being tall enough. The other thing is that this folds really compactly around given, not around, but hilarious given that it’s called compact, and it fits in your hand luggage, in a mini suitcase that you can take on a plane. That’s just a nice to have, a nice little design feature, really compact. It’s not the lightest of their range, but it’s definitely compact and it gives you some great height.
There are the options. Lots of different options for tripods with your smartphone. Now, with Facebook live streaming, having a tripod is just one part of the equation. It helps you get stable images and stable footage, and it helps you, I guess get that pro level video that we all want. There’s other parts to the equation with Facebook live.
Then you’ve got to figure out, what are you going to say? What topics you’re going to live stream about? How do you actually convert these live streams you do to help your business make money? I’ve put together a Facebook live cheat sheet that goes through all of this. I talk about the equipment you need, I talk about what to say, what to do, to get you up and running with Facebook live, even if you’ve never hit record before.
I’m going to post a link to the Facebook live cheat sheets in the description in the comments, so make sure that you grab that. It’s a really good guide to get started with Facebook live, so make sure that you grab it. It’s free and I think you will really, really enjoy it. There you go, I just walked you through a couple of my favorite tripods on the start. I’m looking at all of the tripods here and realizing I have a bit of a problem, but that’s okay. I’m going through all of these.
These are the best options that I think are available that I’ve got, and that I can personally recommend because I tested them all out myself. None of these are paid sponsorships or anything, and nothing like that. These I’ve paid for myself and I recommend because they are quality products and I wouldn’t recommend them otherwise. I hope you’ve enjoyed the live stream and I’ll see you on the next one. Bye for now.
Get your free Facebook Live Cheat Sheets: http://saranguyenonline.com/special/facebook-live-cheat_sheets/
