DIY: The Super-Small Bottle-Cap Tripod

DIY bottle cap tripodWhen you are going on a field trip, you want your tripod to be small. Small and light. It would be best if it can fit in your pocket. When Ron Uriel saw the post about the wrap-able tripod, he had an idea. Why not use the 1/4" bolts in other ways. He told me about an idea to make a small tripod from a coke bottle.

This sounded like an interesting idea so I got to work. First I got several coke bottles (you can learn allot about a person by the bottle caps he uses. In my case, the gray-silver cap suggests I drink the diet version of the bubbly beverage). I also needed a 1/4" hex bolt, a 1/4" hex nut, and two of those round thingies called washers. For the finishing touch I used some sand paper. (If you are not into coke or diet coke you can use the beverage to perform the Mentose and Diet Coke experiment - just make sure you retrieve the bottle)

bottle cap tripod - materials

The first thing I did was to drill a hole in the middle of the bottle cap (note - after this step you can no longer use the cap to seal the bottle :) I drilled using a small drill to mark the middle and enlarged the hole using a 1/4" drill. See the picture for the drilled caps. You can use the sandpaper to even up the top of the cap (not a must). You can also see how the diet cap ended up smoother then the regular one.

bottle cap tripod - drill

Now you make cap sandwich: you take the bold and you slide one washer in; then you screw the bottle cap onto the bolt and slide another washer.

bottle cap tripod - diagram

Lastly you tighten the nut on the outer side of the cap. Make sure you tighten the nut pretty well, other wise, you will have trouble removing the camera from the tripod.

bottle cap tripod - TADA!!

This is it. Very easy.

The next step is to find a coke bottle. Fill the bottle with water or sand to make it heavy and stable. Now place the bolted cap on bottle and plug your camera in.
Now a word of caution here: this tripod will work great for point and shoots like canon A620 or A75, I would not try my D70 with SB800 and 100-400 lens mounted on this fixture.

bottle cap tripod - with camera

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Comments

That's sick man. You have

That's sick man. You have some wacky great ideeas.

Interesting

Interesting idea, but not sure it's that great... pop bottles get tipped over way to easy as it is. Make them top heavy (even with a light weight point and shoot) and I just don't see it as being very stable.

Fun idea, though. This site is full of great stuff. :-)

Stability

For best stability, I recommend using a 2 Liter coke bottle - half filled with sand.
Great article.

Might

That sounds like it might work pretty well that way!

Totally slick. You could use

Totally slick. You could use something like gatorade bottles too, they're usually pretty short and fat in comparison to a soda bottle.

Simple but Effective!

thanks for sharing ;)

Suggestion

You could try filling the bottom 2/3 or 3/4 with sand, and then using wax to seal the top off, leaving at least some space at the top so that

  1. if you tip it, you at least have a chance that the sand will not go everywhere
  2. it will be less likely to tip, not being completely full

Review: DIY: The Super-Small Bottle-Cap Tripod

Great idea and after trying it I can say it really works. I wanted to give you a trackback ping but apparently... well the page didn't list a trackback. So instead if you are interested my really short review is located here.

nice!

What a great idea! how about a diy for shutter release cable any ideas?.... thanks!

DIY Shutter Release Cable

another tutorial

And here is another tutorial for a shutter release - right here on DIYphotography.net

What aa idea!

Yeah thats a good and all can find in a house !!!

cool

Great idea and yes it wil work(already did this)....you got here a great usefull site TOP!!

Keep up the good work!

beach photoraphy

Dig the bottle half way into sand and use self timer. At last you get the whole gang into same picture on an empy beach.

Nothing new under the sun

I know DIY is the whole point, but there's a commercial version of this at WalMart for $3.67 that has a tilt/lock and a quick release plate. If your rig is going to fall over it might as well have the extra features at that price. I saw it here:
http://zzakksgarage.blogspot.com/2007/02/amazing-bottlepod.html

Interesting

Saw this about 4 years ago on Tech TV.

Your bottle cap top

I teach a digital workshops for consumers and have been given them a bottle cap top for the last two years, you can find them on the web selling for $24.99 out of Hong Kong. I've also found that for DSLR you use a wide mouth two liter bottle of water.

Also using a locking nut and a 1" 1/4" screw with 3 washers works better and with one washer being 3/4" and the then use a 1" washer with a wing nut between the camera and the base, will help also.

Dennis

This would work great

This would work great if you had it in a cup holder on a stroller or similar cup holder device.

Very awesome idea!

Very awesome idea!

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