Of all the hats I've worn in my younger days, prototype aerospace machinist and aerospace quality control manager were two of them.

That means I have a terminal case of tinker. So we approached Aquatica about a tripod they've already made a one off prototype of, but we couldn't get them to bite again. If I wasn't so busy, I have a precision 16"x40" lathe and power feed vertical turret mill, with digital readouts on all axis on both machines, and I would make the best one ever, but, who has the time?!

So back to my inner McGuyver....

The issue with tripods are they will corrode, but if cheap enough, after a week, who cares, BUT, videographers and photographers are already lugging too much equipment around to begin with so we're normally already up against airline luggage weight restrictions, and we have to resort to countermeasures, so adding a heavy, and worse yet, bulky tripod is about as high on our list as buying a CD of fingernails on chalkboards and other fun sound effects.

Gates makes an underwater tripod for their housings, but in my opinion any current tripod, land based or otherwise is going to be problematic underwater.

The drawbacks to land based are you have to adjust each one of the legs, and that is time consuming when you must act quick to catch that elusive macro critter. Most land based tripods have legs that do not fold flat, but Manfrotto makes a below model whose legs fold all the way perpendicular for those low angle shots. This also facilitates folding them all horizontal so they don't stick downwards while cruising close to the bottom.

But between all of them, including the custom Gates, the last thing I want to do is have to adjust each one of the legs, both in angle and length.

In aerospace manufacturing we used to have metal cutting machines whose cutters had coolant directed at them via locking spheres. So with a little bit of searching, here is what I found made by a company called Joby

gorillapod.jpg

Each legs is about 12" long, flexible, will not corrode in salt water, weighs next to nothing, folds flat for transport, and has a real smooth give to it so if you need to "pan" your shot, it will act as sort of a viscous pan head when you "steer" your videocam on the subject.

Now this tripod will not hold the weight of a 3 chip HDcam on land, but underwater, your videocam should be more or less neutrally buoyant.

Now for macro shots where your videocam is within 12" of the bottom, I think this rig will become the defacto standard for macro videographers.

As an update, Joby is now producing a new, heavier duty model shown below called the Focus that will hold the weight of a large videocamera up to 11lbs. on land, which means it should work even better underwater.

Gorillapod Focus.jpg

We will be getting one in soon for a complete review, and we will be taking it to our next underwater HD video production shoot in Asia to let you all know how well it works.

We think that at a $110 pricepoint, it can't be beat. If you can't wait for the on location use and review, you can order yours now directly by clicking here and scrolling to the bottom of the web page.