Heavier tripods are generally more stable than lighter ones — wind doesn’t affect them as much — but hauling them around can be a pain. Instructables user Andrew Axley came up with the brilliant idea of making his simple tripod more stable by adding his own weight hook. The tripod is light when not in use and when you need extra stability you simply hang your camera bag onto the hook. All you need to do is figure out a way to attach a hook securely at the center — Axley chose to drill a hole through the side of the center column and attach an S-hook using a bolt and nut.
Sharp recently announced its AQUOS SH-01D phone, which is one of the few phones on the market that feature optical image stabilization. The phone is powered by Android OS, and features a 12.1 megapixel 1/3.2-inch CMOS sensor. The demo above shows how effective the stabilization is at canceling out small movements of the sensor.
If you ever find yourself needing some quick stabilization when recording video with your DSLR, but don’t have a fancy rig with you (or you’re in a place where you can’t bring one), you can use an ordinary tripod as a makeshift shoulder rig for some extra stability.
Gomite’s new Tiltpod is a simple “tripod” designed for people who do a lot of traveling with a compact camera. Stored on the end of your hand strap, it attaches quickly to your camera’s tripod mount to help you frame and stabilize your shots when there’s no one around to help you take it. The underside is made of a “grippy” magnetic material that helps it stay still on most surfaces, and the angle of the base can be adjusted after the camera is attached. Read the rest of this entry »
Back in March of 1954, Popular Science magazine featured an invention called the “dentapod” — a metal bracket attached to the tripod mount that you bite with your teeth to stabilize your camera. For some reason, this didn’t seem to catch on back then, but if any of you aspiring entrepreneurs decided to revive this thing for DSLRs, I’m sure it would be the next big thing.
Leica offers a funky $200 lens holder accessory for its M system film rangefinders that screws into the tripod mount and lets you store an extra lens on the bottom of the camera. Here’s the description found on the site:
[...] the second lens also serves as a handle when it’s inserted into its bayonet mount, helping to provide additional stability when shooting handheld at long exposure times. The setup could even be used as a miniature tripod.
Makes sense. As we all know, the first thing a Leica shooter thinks when they drop big bucks on a new lens is, “Hmm. I’ll bet this lens would also work well as a mini-tripod!”.
Did you know that earlier this year YouTube added a free image stabilization tool to its video editor? It lets you smooth out the jitter in your videos without having to shell out dough for an expensive rig or software solution. The downside is that the stabilization makes your video look like it was shot by a robot. Read the rest of this entry »
Nikon has a support page for people who wonder why the company hasn’t added sensor-shift image stabilization to its DSLRs. The first point is that stabilizing the image before it enters the camera allows the user to see exactly what the sensor “sees” through the viewfinder, and allows the autofocus and metering sensors to take advantage of this stabilized image as well. Secondly, they state that they can optimize the system for each lens to achieve finely tuned stabilization that gains extra stops of light over sensor-based systems.
The Twig Pod is a new lightweight aluminum monopod for compact cameras (not DSLRs) that collapses like a tent rod into four 8-inch segments. It has a pointy base that can be planted into the ground for hands free shooting. In addition to stabilizing your camera when propped up, the head also bends, allowing you to take self-portraits from further than an arm’s length away (two similar products are the XShot and QuikPod). You can pick up a Twig Pod for $28 over on Photojojo.
You’ve likely seen this DIY trick before, but it doesn’t hurt to share this for those who haven’t. Instead of carrying around a tripod or monopod, you can easily stabilize your camera using a washer, some string, and a bolt. It’s a cheap and easy stabilizer that you can carry around with you in your camera bag for those moments when you wish you had a steadier hand.
