Welcome to our article where we will be covering what is in our opinion at least, the best monopod for wildlife photography as well as a second, more budget-friendly monopod alternative too. As wildlife photography often involves a large amount of traveling to get to the required location, more and more photographers and videographers are choosing to carry a lightweight monopod rather than a heavier tripod system.
Unfortunately, at the time of writing, the monopod market is a bit of a minefield that has many high-priced, low-quality products that are essentially a total waste of time. Thankfully, both of the products that we will be featuring in our article have excellent reputations within the community as well as offering some of the best performance and functionality available for their relative price points.
Table of Contents
The Sirui P 326 Monopod
Being a high-quality carbon fiber tripod, the Sirui P 326 is extremely lightweight while also being very robust and having the ability to provide some excellent image stabilization for you. The smaller size and lighter weight offer a number of advantages for your wildlife photography adventures than a tripod.
The monopod has been designed to be as quick and easy to set up as possible too and a good ball head (Click here to check for product prices and availability) with a decent quick release plate will let you mount your camera rig within seconds. This makes the monopod ideal for capturing video footage or photographs of birds in flight as well as other time-sensitive wildlife situations that are over quickly.
The Sirui P 326 has an excellent build quality too although you would expect this due to its price tag. This ensures that it is robust enough to take all the punishment coming its way during use. This allows it to provide a large number of image stabilization that can even support a heavy telephoto lens based camera rig.
Click Here To Read Independent Third Party Reviews Of This Product!
Click Here To Check For Prices On This Product!
The video below offers an additional third-party, independent review for the Sirui P 326 to offer our readers an independent opinion of the product.
The Manfrotto Compact Extreme
This has lead to a number of videographers and photographs turning to it as their go-to source of image stabilization for their wildlife photography. Since its release, a fair few of these people who use the monopod as a part of their main kit have posted their own independent reviews of it online (click here to read some of them). If you have the time available, it may be worth reading a few of them to get yourself a truley external opinion of the monopod and its capabilities from people who use it on a regular basis.
Although this is a more budget-friendly, entry-level monopod, it still does provide some great image stabilization and it will probably be able to meet many of our reader’s needs without you having to break the bank. That said, Manfrotto has had to cut costs somewhere and its build quality and materials are not as good as the Sirui P 326 covered above by any stretch. If you have paying clients or are trying to build up your wildlife photography portfolio then we would definitely say take the Sirui P 326 covered above as it will definitely provide you with better results.
The included ball head on the Manfrotto monopod is surprisingly good though offering a quick and easy way to mount or unmount your camera rig when needed. This can help you save time to capture those rare, short, blink and you will miss it moments that are common when trying record animals.
The universal thread attachment on the top of the monopod allows you to swap the included ball head out for a higher-quality ball head if you see fit though. This makes it very easy to customize the performance of your monopod so that it can definitely meet your needs.
Click Here To Read Independent Third Party Reviews Of This Product!
Click Here To Check For Prices On This Product!
Related Articles
The Ultimate Joby Gorillapod 3K Review!
The Ultimate Sirui T005X Review!
The Ultimate Sirui T1205X Review!