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Setup a Tripod for a Camcorder

Edited by Grimm, Eng

2 Parts:

Hi, you're watching VisiHow. Today, we're going to show you how to set up the tripod for your Canon Legria HFR 500-series handheld camcorder, or the Canon Vixia HFR 500-series handheld camcorder. The only difference between the two devices is that the Legria is PAL-standard and the Vixia is NTSC-standard. NTSC is for North America, and PAL is for Europe.

Setup tripod for camcorder.mp4-canvas38 442839.jpg

Steps

1
Here we have a nice little Velbon tripod, so let's get this unzipped and opened up
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Okay, it's unzipped. Let's prop it open.

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2
We'll start with the bottom
.
Pop this up. The foot slides up and slides down. If your feet are on a flat surface, you'll generally slide them out equally. However, sometimes you may have a whole, in which case you slide one piece out and the rest of them don't come out.

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3
So, we'll put them back because we don't need them
.
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4
Next thing we have is the tripod head
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There's a little lock button here. You can see it says "Free" and "Lock."

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5
You push it out to open, which let's me take this off
.
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6
Then you push it in and lock it to close it
.

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7
Now, we're going to open it
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Now when it's just opened, it won't come off. That's a safety feature in case you forget to close and lock it, so you don't drop your camera on the floor.
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8
So we're going to push that open, and take a finger to lift this out
.

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9
Now as you can see here, there's actually some notches
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Those notches line up with these parts.
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10
So what we're going to do now is take the camera, set it on its top
.
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11
You see that hole we talked about earlier - that's where we're going to put this
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You see the screw here. On the bottom side, we have a little notch. We also have a little pushable piece. The push piece is going to go there and the screw is going to go there.
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12
So let's put this down here
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There's the hole. Line these pieces up. Get that push piece lined up in there properly.
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13
So now we're just going to hand tighten this
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This will tighten the base plate.
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14
When our base plate is tightened, I'm going to give it another twist
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You can use something other than your hands to tighten the base plate, but I don't normally do that. It's a good idea if you're moving around a lot and bumping it. I'm not planning on moving around and bumping it though.
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15
Now we just take our camera, and it slides right in here
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To do that, we have to push on the little button here. The lever we talked about. You push that lever.
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16
Take this lever, push it open and you stick your camcorder in there
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I'm going to start by sliding my camcorder in here. Then I'm going to take my finger and push this lever up, and lock it. Now the camcorder's attached.
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17
The next thing we have is this little arm here
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When you turn and open it, it allows you to move the camcorder up and down. Generally speaking, you use this to control your shot.
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18
I'm going to close the lens cover while we're talking, like this
.
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19
We're going to pick it up
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Normally, you want to make sure your camera's not attached when you're sitting it up. But because this is a small camera, that is fine.
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20
Just open it, hold it and apply a little pressure
.
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21
Push down and click
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Now we're ready to go!
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22
We've got the handheld piece I showed you earlier, which lets you slide up and down
.
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23
Here we have a level bubble
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This is a little bubble down here that lets us know that it's leveled. If you're on an un-leveled surface and you're shooting, it can be quite irritating when you find out it's not leveled.
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24
Here we have a knob on the side
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You turn this knob and it allows you to rotate the camera.
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25
We can close that
.
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26
We have a little lever here
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You turn this lever and it allows you to actually lift the camera to get some rather strange angles. Depending on what you're doing, you may need to do that. However, the golden rule of video recording is that everything is in landscape mode. Landscape mode is longways. You don't want to have portrait mode, which is kind of up and down.
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27
Last but not least, we have this little guy here
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You turn this to open it. This gives you access to this handy little lever here.
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28
You take this lever and pull it out
.
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29
And just like an old fashioned pump-house, you can turn it to raise the camera
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Just fantastic. If you let go of it, it's going to fall.
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30
So once you turn it, you tighten it up
.
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31
And there you are
!
That is how you get your tripod set up for your video camera or your regular camera. Thanks for using VisiHow. Have a great day, and we look forward to seeing you in a future video!
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