Last Christmas, Dennis and Kim bought me a Gorillapod SLR, a flexible tripod that “secures your camera to just about anything anywhere and everywhere.” Haven’t been able to try it out until recently, when I had some field work in the Towson area.
I needed to shoot some video of a traffic roundabout in operation, to show to people at a public meeting who’ve probably never driven in a roundabout before. Of course, the Towson circle isn’t the best example of a two-lane roundabout, with its oblong oval shape, and also it seems that people in Towson don’t know how to drive in a roundabout either (we’re going to have to do a lot of clipping and patching to make a decent video without showing all the bad drivers).
Anyways, Towson had the best vantage point out of all the other roundabouts we’d thought of, so I headed out to the mall garage on the northeast side of the roundabout. On the roof of the garage, I tried a traditional tripod at first, which worked okay. The only problem was that it was very windy and wind gusts were shaking the tripod and camera around, which wasn’t good for my video.
I set up the Gorillapod next. You’ll need a quarter or something to tighten the screw and securely attach your camera to the ‘pod. There was railing on the garage roof that was fat and round, perfect for my Gorillapod to wrap around. I adjusted the legs a little for a firm grip, and that was it. Since the ‘pod had such a low profile, it wasn’t really affected by the wind like the traditional tripod.
The Gorillapod is great tool for all photographers. There’s also a mini-version for use with smaller cameras. I can’t wait to try the ‘pod with some night-time shots.