Customer Reviews

The Pod - Bean Bag Portable Support for Your Camera

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I was looking forward to the arrival of this product. It was packaged well, looked great and was a resonable price. The "Pod" is stable on a completely flat, rough surface. But do not put it on the dashboard of your car, on an outdoor glass top table in windy conditions. The base can be slippery on certain surfaces. It is also not heavy enough for anything but smaller point and shoot cameras. I removed the plastic pellets and put in BB's. It is much heavier, but work much better! Rock solid in any condition., I also used so no-slip backling cloth to keep it from sliding off smooth surfaces.

I own a Yellow Pod, which is the smallest of the Pod family. It weighs 5-3/4 ounces, is 4" in diameter, 1-1/2" high and has its 1/4-20 screw in the dead center of the top.

For the new line of palm-sized "beer can" HD camcorders like the Canon VIXIA HFS100 HD Flash Memory Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom, it's almost perfect. I don't intend to remove it from the camera. I dragged a miniature Sunpak tripod all over on our last vacation. It was small, but the Pod would have been better.

If you just want to stabilize the camera while shooting, the Pod is hard to beat. Set it on a log or fencepost and you're ready to go.

To add flexibility, I'm considering fabbing up a small 1/4" thick aluminum plate that I could attach to the bottom of the camera with an offset 1/4-20 threaded hole in it. That way I could shift the CG of the camera 1" fore or aft for custom balance.

I also have the Canon WD 58H - Converter 0.7x wide angle adapter. It's almost as big and heavy as the camera body itself. Its sunshade is gigantic. (See some of the pictures.) If I leave the adapter and hood on the camera and put it in the bag for storage, the Pod gives support to the camera body and takes pressure off the plastic hood. The Pod's 1-1/2" thickness is just right to raise the camera enough so the hood doesn't hit the surrounding surface. This allows me to pan and tilt as if it's on a tripod. The Pod gives enough support that combined with the Canon's optical stabilization, images come out very steady, even while panning.

There are six models. See them at http://www.thepod.ca/

Yellow & Blue models are the same except the screw is centered on the Yellow and off center on the Blue. Good for really small still and video cameras.

Red & Green models are 5" dia, 2" thick and again have centered or offcentered screws. This would work with a basic DSLR or medium video camera.

Black & Silver models are 7-1/2" dia, 3" thick, also with centered and offcentered screws. These are "pro" models with aux tiedown loops, designed for larger video cameras or DSLR's with long lenses.

For this much flexibility and portability, you can't beat The Pod, especially for the price.

A decent mini tripod will run you at least twice or more. And tripods are clumsy to carry and deploy. Especially for video, tripods are slow to get level. It's why they invented ball leveling for video tripods. But mini-tripods don't come with ball leveling. I actually inserted a Manfrotto 482 mini ball head between the Sunpak Mini-PRO Plus Table Tripod with 3-Way Pan Head & Pan Handle - Black Anodized Finish (extends to 12.2") pan head and the legs so I could level the video camera faster. Works well. Pod works better.

The Pod is simply there, all the time. No more wedging a stick or pen under the camera to get it to tilt up a bit. What a great idea.

I am pretty sure I ordered the Manfrotto BOGEN TPR0017B The Pod - Bean Bag Portable Support for Your Camera, which is described as being 10" in diameter. I received the Pod which is 3" in diameter. I have a Canon 20D with the Tamron 70-300 lens that I was wanting to use the bean bag with and this one is totally insufficient. I'm not sure the 3" one would even work too well with a compact digital camera. I decided to keep the 3" one and try it with my small compact digital camera. I think it would be better without the screw too, where you can just place the camera on the bean bad so it can steady the camera.