Ghetto tripod

You know those cheap tripods whose head is divided in two parts?

The theory is that you screw one part to the camera, then slide it on the head. You can then slide it off and use the camera handheld without having to work the screw every time.

What actually happens is that the small part opens a portal to an alternate dimension and forever vanishes from this plane of existence, leaving you with an incomplete tripod you can't use.

After three hours of looking for the blasted thing all over my apartment I said "to hell with it", removed the whole head from the tripod, fished out from a drawer my bendy pocket minitripod and a releasable zip tie and made this:

<-- clickable

Surprisingly, the camera is more stable now than it ever was with the original head.

That looks pretty sweet. Can you adjust the tilt, etc.?

I can adjust it a bit by bending the bendy tripod. It has less adjustment than the original head, of course, but I only ever use it to take pictures of things directly in front of the camera, so I don't care about that.

I have another tripod (a good one) over at my mom's place. As soon as I get it over here I'll remove the bendy minitripod and throw this one in the garbage.

Yeah, those are quick release plates. They're amazingly popular, and not only in cheap tripods; we have a few $2k+ tripods at my university (only for those of us in the advanced video production classes, heh heh) with quick release plates about 4"x10", that have a bit of forward and backward travel on the tripod head and can be locked at their balance point, so the camera doesn't tip forward or backward in use.

I keep the quick release plate from my Velbon DF-50 attached to my DMC-FZ50 at all times. I haven't had any problems with it, and it was fast and convenient to use when I was filming a wedding and repeatedly went from tripod-mounted to handheld and back.

Add one more and you have yourself a tri-tripod. Gnarly.