Home-made camera stabilising handle

Friday 22 June 2012 at 8:11 pm

Here's the latest knocked-up-in-my-shed invention...

My son, a keen photographer, particularly of BMX and skateboarding folk (linky here), wanted one of these: 

so of course ol' dad said "I've got an old bit of lawnmower handle that looks like that, I'll make one for ya."  So the prototype looked like this:

Which the darling boy described as 'The council estate of camera mounts'.  Charming.  So then I found some bits of discarded broken tripod in my work's AV department and tarted it up a bit:

 

Design details are: The main bit is a piece of lawnmower handle - it already had one bend in it so I had to add another to make the C-shape.  I have no pipe bender which is why it kinked!

Handle is off a broken tripod - the hole was far too wide so I had to fabricate plastic washers to glue in, with some pipe lagging in the void bit.  I then glued on an endcap

Tripod head - this luckily fitted straight on, and gives the angle adjustment that the shop-bought one lacks!

The final tarting-up was a layer of gaffer tape, for decoration really.  In fact it looks a bit rubbish so I might find something else, or maybe paint it.

I've tried, filming my 2-year old running around the house and the balance is pretty good.  Angle adjustment is useful too.  Maybe when I give it to the boy he'll do amazing things with it!