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Tripods can be a photographers best friend when it comes to Landscape, Portrait, low light photography, or just when you need a third hand. However they can be a bit cumbersome to carry around. Mini tripods are ok as long as you can find somewhere quite flat and level to put them on, I also find them a bit restrictive to use.

Last year I was bought a Gorillapod as a gift, and as soon as I took it out of the packaging knew that it was going to come in handy.
The Gorillapod worked (and still does) so well it went everywhere with me and I just about stopped using my full size tripod.

How does the Gorillapod work?
Unlike a mini tripod it doesn’t need a level or elevated surface. Each Gorillapod is made up of 30 or more flexible ball joints that have about 45 degree of adjustment and can rotate 360 degrees. Each ball joint also has a rubber ring grip as do the feet for extra gripping power. This means it can go anywhere and literally wrap its arms (or its legs) around just about anything, for example, branches, tables, rocks, banisters, railings, in fact nearly any object in sight, well almost.
I found the Gorillapod to be tough, very flexible and it easily fitted in my coat pocket and my camera bag.
The tripod head, has a “slim-line attachment” which slides out to allow easy attachment to your camera. Once the attachment is tightened into the tripod mount on you camera, you just slide it into the head until it clicks. A push-button release holds the attachment into place. For extra security a rotating ring lock prevents the push button from being depressed and releasing the slim-line attachment.
It comes in three sizes, and the one I received was the SLR-Zoom.

The smallest and lightest is the Gorillapod original which is ideal for any compact digital camera, this tripod only weighs 1.6oz and stands 5.9 inches (15cm) high.

The next biggest is the Gorillapod SLR, which is designed for lightweight SLR and Video cameras up to 800g (1.75 lbs) in weight, this tripod is 9.8 inches high (25cm), weighs 5.8oz, as it is bigger than the Compact version it can adapt itself to more things.

Then there is the daddy, and that is the Gorillapod SLR-Zoom which is designed for heavier SLRs and can hold up to 6.5 pounds in weight, more than enough for a camera with a large zoom lens attached. Although it is the same size as the SLR version, the legs are chunkier and it weighs 8.5oz.

Overall I really like my Gorillapod, its strong, flexible and comes in very handy, the downside is that I seem to be in the photos more.

I highly recommend the Gorillapod, click on the link for more information and to buy, or you buy them from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 6:44 am and is filed under Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.