Kickstarter, it took the world by surprise, and now is one of the most treasures starting places of creative people needing a little boost. One of my favourite Kickstarters is the Pocket Tripod. A wallet-sized, fully movable iPhone tripod, making it easy to make longer exposure pictures on the iPhone. As a photographer, my favourite portable camera remains the iPhone. I takes more than decent pictures, there are a lot of apps on it for editing and sharing, but most of all because it’s always with me. Since my first iPhone in 2008 I made over 15.000 pictures with five devices.
The small dimensions (just over 8 cm high, 5 cm high, and a measly 2 mm thin) makes it sure that it will fit in even an overcrowded wallet (as every wallet is).
When you unpack the Pocket Tripod you will find the note on how to transform the credit card sized piece of plastic to a fully functional iPhone tripod. Just twist, pull and turn on the right spots, and everything works great. The design is very clever and brings a smile to everyone I show it to.
It does best what it is said to do: it stabilises your iPhone. However, the nature of that promise has some small flaws. This is not because of the design of the product, but in the nature of photography itself. You see, a photographer likes to move the camera to the exact position, not put it down on a table. That is why every decent tripod is fully adjustable in height. Even when putting it down on a table, you have the problem of the table surface being wobbly, be it by design in ye olde pub, be it your table guests, who are probably drinking, eating, or touching the table in a lively discussion. So if I could have one wish for the future of this product is the ability to mount this to a standard tripod mount.
Another problem in the same nature is that the latest iPhone cameras are so damn good with the open aperture and high ISO sensitivity that for almost every occasion the device can be held stable enough to take great pictures. But hey, you can’t really complain about that now can we!
When the stars do align and you find an interesting moving subject with a stable location to put your iPhone and tripod, it will do absolute wonders. Especially when combining it with an app like SlowShutter, you will get great results!
If you love iPhone photography as much as I do, I can only recommend this little tool!
You can pre-order this awesome gadget at their site: www.pocket-tripod.com.
