Ultimate Gadgetry: Gorillapod
Sunday, December 7, 2008 - John Greene
Like a lot of you, I’m on the road quite a bit, doing tournaments and business travel with friends, and I usually have a digital camera with me. Over the years, I got a bit more serious about making sure my photos didn’t look like compete ass and started to actually learn how to use the $500 Canon G9 I bought with my limping-out-in-the-black winnings from a Vegas tournament. I learned all about ISOs and F-Stops and white balance and all that jazz, but no matter what I did, my photos taken at night after my third or fourth coconut drink looked really horrible. I needed a tripod, but who really wants to haul one of those with them every time they go to party?
Enter the Gorillapod. For between $20-40 (depending on the model,) you’ve got a tripod that you can throw in your courier bag (or man purse, as my girlfriend keeps calling mine) that actually holds pretty much every camera on the market steady for the longer exposure shots you want to do without having a flash ruin them by making everyone look like a startled goth. The Gorillapod Original holds pretty much every point-and-shoot you can buy now, up to a little more than 9 ounces, with the Gorillapod SLR handling my G9 and cameras like the Nikon 40D. There’s also a Gorillapod SLR Zoom that’ll hold something with an expensive heavy lens on the front (up to 6.8 pounds,) but I can’t honestly see most people coming close to needing that. It’s also a nice thing to throw into someone’s Christmas stocking if you’ve already bought them a camera, as it’s cheap but they probably don’t know they need it until after a while.
Tags: cameras, gorillapod
