There are up-sides and down-sides to every single product, the most successful ones being those with less downs. Usually. Not always anyway. But this is one of those products which I would have been very interested in when travelling recently, despite its obvious down-side. I use a really, really good Manfrotto which, granted, is a little large, but stays still in a howling gale, but I had to leave it at home on a recent trip to New York due to baggage limitations and stuff like that.
The product you see above is the new Zipshot from Tamrac. It’s a self assembling mechanism, it pops up from a small form factor in a second and allows (apparently) relatively good stability. It will handle a camera and lens combo of up to three pounds (which for you Continental types is around 1.25Kg.) not much, but it would certainly be great for holding video cameras steady for long shots of landscapes or to create time lapse videos.
It’s available now from many places for around $50-60 US it is certainly worth it for those people who hike or travel extensively.
Everybody says nice work Tamrac, it’s a great thing to have in our camera bag.
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