Harry Krause wrote:
I think I mentioned once that I rarely use a tripod, but frequently use
a monopod. Well, I wanted one a bit stouter than what I've been using
and just picked up one of these:

http://tinyurl.com/oey2s


I'm going to give it a tryout this weekend, but already I am impressed
with its design, quality of parts, assembly and lever extension
controls. If you want better "nature" shots and you don't want to mess
with a tripod, you might like a monopod.

Oh, and it makes one hell of a nightstick. Smack someone upside the head
with this Manfrotto and he's out for the count. Or even permanently.

A monopod would be more useful for boat photos than a tripod.
Especially interior shots.
You certainly wouldn't be able to fine enough room to land all three
legs of a tripod in many small cabins, and a monopod allows a lot more
flexibility in placement.

Besides, as old as some of us farts are getting we can always use a
monopod as a walking stick while teetering down the dock to the photo
shoot, and on those days when too weak to stand up and take nourishment
it would provide something substantial to hang onto for additional
support.

My favorite tool for boat photos has become my 10.5mm lens. A full 180
field of view.
The photos this lens produces have so much internal parallax, of
course, that as captured by the camera they are useless for
publication. Enter the Nikon Capture software. Nikon knows exactly how
the 10.5mm lens bends light, and the program simply "unbends" the image
to reconstruct it as rectilinear rather than "fish eye" in format. You
still need to think through the composition of the photo, as even with
the software correction things that are positioned very close to the
camera lens will appear
ridiculously large. When shooting something that has a sharp angle, (a
run of galley joinery for example), one needs to mindful about where
the planes intersect in the composition, and it is still important to
shoot as "level" as possible. Probably 6 out of 10 of these photos are
acceptable, and 1 or 2 out of 10 are actually pretty good.