Now it's time to talk about how to set your tripod up properly so that you can smoothly move left, right up and down. This goes beyond just opening the tripod up and putting the camera on it, there are specific things you can do to make sure the camera is working with you. We're going to tweak the left and right torque and the up and down torques and it's perfectly able to move the way you want it to move when you want to move it. So let's go upstairs right now and take a look at these techniques that you can set your tripod up perfectly. So we have our tripod set up up here in the bleachers in this instance, and we're going to use two different controls the up and down and the left and right and this is what I want you to really pay attention to setting properly that you have the most efficient way to move this.

So if you look here, we have this dial and this dial is my up and down tilt. You can see if I make it really loose, the camera will drop depending on the weight of the camera. Okay, if I make it really tight, it's not going anywhere. So we want to find that sweet spot somewhere in the middle because if it's too tight and you try to tilt up or down, you might Jerk the camera to get it going. If it's too loose and it's tipping, you're going to have to hold it steady before a play and you're going to have a lot of shake. So what we're going to do is we're going to dial this to the point where it's falling, barely.

And you can see how it's barely falling here, this is actually almost right on, we're going to get it to the point where it's almost tipping over on its own, but not quite. Okay, that's going to allow us to move this thing smoothly up and down, almost with one finger. If you can see how I'm doing this with one finger, a little bit of resistance, I got to push it a little bit, but it's definitely not something I have to force. So by making sure this is set properly, we're not going to be in a position where we're going to fast which is going to cause a shake, and we're not in a position where we have to push it too hard and be kind of behind it. We want that sweet spot right in here where we can move it with one finger if we had to gently sir, nice, easy tilt up and downs.

Now we're going to look at the left right torque button and on this particular tripod because it may vary on yours. It's this dial Right here, you can see that if I make this really tight, this thing isn't going anywhere. And on the flip side, if I make it really loose, the tripods really Herky jerky and loose. So we want to do similar to the tilt up and down, we want to find that sweet spot where it's not so tight that it can't move at all. Otherwise, you'll be jerking it, but it's just loose enough that we can do this with one finger, we should be able to move the camera left and right with one finger with a little tiny bit of resistance. But it should still be fairly easy.

What you don't want is you want to get it to a point where when you push it, it goes careening out of your way, you have to keep it just tight enough that there's a little bit of resistance because no player is going to be able to run faster than you can move this thing. So we want to have a little bit of resistance and I like to test it with one finger. Okay, so putting it all together, we've got the left right down. We're going to get the tilt left and right down and now you can see if you want to practice before the game, we're going to be able to follow any action smoothly you can almost do it with one finger. And if there's a tilt up and down necessary, you have the ability to smoothly control it. The worst part about shooting is jerky camera movement.

So we want to make sure we don't have that. And by using these two techniques, up, down, left, right with a little resistance, you're going to find that you can move your tripod really slowly and easily. Having a level tripod is really important and most tripods have a little bubble on it that tells you whether or not your tripod is crooked or not. However, if you're up in the bleachers or above the pressbox, having a level tripod doesn't always guarantee that you're going to be able to shoot level, the field at some high schools and parks are actually not level themselves even though the press box might be. So what I want you to do is turn the camera on and pointed at the other sideline across the field, take the top of your camera frame and line it up with the other sideline and if the two are parallel, you know that your camera is level.

However, if in this example which looks crooked just to begin with, but if for example you lower the camera and see that the top of the frame is not level and not parallel with the other sideline then You're crooked. So just simply by using the other sideline or using some sort of horizontal plane up against the top of your camera frame, that's how you can be sure that your camera is level because we don't want to do is shoot a game that looks crooked like this one. So there you go. That's how I want you to set up the tripod every game. practice those moves before the game and make sure you have everything perfect so that when the game starts, you're ready to go. Now I also want you to practice and you'll see attached this module down below is a PDF document you can download with an exercise for practicing moving left and right zooming in and out by following specific objects.

So download that practice it at home, and then you'll be ready to go the next time you shoot a game