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Saturday, March 3, 2012

A Decent and Cheap Bike Tripod

I like to take pictures, but I am not a serious photographer. My camera is a simple Coolpix S6100, an inexpensive point and shoot. I discovered I could take nice action shots with it if I used a tripod. So I really wanted to get a tripod for my bike.

I decided on a tripod with flexible arms called the Gorillapod. The arms have gripper rubber on them which keeps them in place when wrapped around an object. The closest place for me to buy it was Walmart. At around $20 it rates a "cheap" label in my book.

This week I began experimenting with the new tripod. It was easy to attach to the handlebar.

On the first ride using the new tripod, I learned several things.

Don't look down to fiddle with the camera. It is very easy to run off the road doing this.

When learning to point and take pictures without looking at the camera, you get some unexpected results. Especially when you have the shutter set to silent mode.

Take lots of shots and delete the bad ones. You need to guess on camera direction a lot.

On my first ride using the new camera tripod, I took this shot of Al while we were heading down the road at a decent clip with a fast cadence. Note that the spokes are not a blur and his wildly flapping jersey, like the spokes, is pretty much caught in mid flap. Now (he quickly told me upon seeing the picture) I just need to catch a shot like that when the action is actually interesting!


I need to change the mount position to the brake hoods. But I definitely like this new toy.