I’d been wanting to try it for months – sticking my camera at the end of a pole so as to get different angles. I read about it while researching techniques for real estate photography, at a blog (click here to read the entry).
I bought the two-ended screw with the help of a great guy at Home Depot who was intrigued by the idea. He also helped me design a light tent from PVC pipe, but that’s a different blog entry.
But with one thing and another, I could not seem to find the time to drill the hole at the end of the wooden poles I’d bought for the purpose.
Finally, though, my curiosity about the upper reaches of the tree drove me to dig out my drill and make the pole.
Then I had to experiment with using it. I tried it at home with my DSLR (a Pentax K10D) using the wireless remote, but that didn’t work so well because I had to hold the pole with camera in one hand while pushing the remote button with the other. Besides that, the remote is line-of-sight, so I had to angle the camera in such a way that I could aim the remote at its back – not always the best angle.
I had better luck using the self-timer with a fixed lens (50mm) and manual focus set to the approximate distance from the tree. After a few bad shots (I’m not great at judging distances), I was delighted to come up with this one:
But then, just as I brought down the pole from another shot, I bumped the pole against the railing.
The metal groove that holds the screw onto the camera body had come loose. Now I can’t put my camera on any form of tripod. I haven’t tried to fix this yet, but I’ve sealed it with duct tape to prevent dust from seeping in the sides.
So next I used the trusty Canon Powershot S3, with the self-timer set to a 5-second delay and 10 consecutive shots. (My DSLR doesn’t have this option)
The one at the top of this post was taken with the Powershot. Here’s another one I liked:
Another advantage of working with the compact digital is that it has a swivel LCD, which means I can see what it is shooting no matter what weird angle the camera is at.
That was especially helpful when I used the built-in macro setting.
I burned through a lot of shots, because apparently the camera locks in the focus and exposure from the first frame. But I did grab some that I liked, and enjoyed the view, too.
