I found a location that is quite picturesque. A wooden bridge over a creek featuring a waterfall was a very busy entrance into a subdivision. There wasn’t room to safely use a tripod. I came up with two solutions. Both thanks to the new Playtpod Ultra.
Tree, meet Platypod Ultra
I found a tree next to the bridge. It was sturdy. One of its lower branches was thick and solid. I attached the Platypod Ultra to the tree with the strap that comes with it. The Ultra has a 3/8″ bolt welded so it becomes one with the base plate. Two notches, one on either side of the Platypod, secure it to the strap. I put the strap on “backward” to show the notches. Normally, the strap covers the arms seen here and runs behind the Platypod plate. It doesn’t matter which way the strap runs. With it behind the plate, the strap won’t interfere with whatever is mounted to the Platypod.
Using the strap
The strap would be fine by itself. The two buckles on it secure it nicely. One of the distinctive hallmarks of the Platypod designers is their unrelenting attention to the smallest detail that might make a difference to photographers. Here, they added Velcro on the end of the strap and on the back of it as well. Once secured through the two buckle rings, the end folds over and attaches to the Velcro. I certainly appreciated the extra security of this arrangement when my Canon 1Dx Mark II with a Sigma 24-105mm f/4.0 DG HSM Art lens was mounted to the Really Right Stuff BH-55 ballhead.
Mounting a ballhead
Even with the strap over the Platypod Ultra‘s base plate, the RRS ballhead fit tightly. I was completely confident that the ballhead was solidly attached to the Platypod. Again, the design was reassuring. As I mentioned earlier, the 3/8″ titanium bolt is welded seamlessly to the base. There is no way it can come loose or fail to hold the ballhead or anything attached to it. I am a huge fan of the Really Right Stuff ball heads that clamp to custom-made L-Plate. The brackets are machined using CNC milling tools to fit each camera model. There are two major advantages. First, no matter the camera’s orientation, the bracket does not slip. Try that with a mounting plate that comes with tripods today. Put the camera in vertical and the plate loosens thanks to gravity. The other big deal is the ease of changing from portrait to landscape orientations. Unclamp the camera, rotate 90º, reclamp. Done. No repositioning of the mount necessary as the plate allows the camera to rotate on the axis of the lens.
Add a camera-upside down
The Platypod Ultra has changed the normal orientation of things by being mounted to the tree. A tripod mounts to the bottom of the camera for a landscape. In this case, the mount is closer to vertical. Mounting to the camera’s bottom would make the orientation portrait. There are times when upside down works. Here is a great example. The L-Plate for the Canon 1Dx Mark II has the vertical mount on the camera’s left side. Perfect in almost every situation. Handheld, a camera is gripped on the right with the photographer’s right hand. The left-hand cradles the lens. It makes sense for the Portrait part of the L-Plate to be on the left. This time, I wanted a landscape photo of the scene. I had to use the normal portrait part of the bracket for landscape. The only way to do this was to put the camera upside down. It’s kinda awkward to work with the camera this way and very doable as the photo that leads this post shows.
Super solid support
The Platypod Ultra held the relatively heavy (seven pound) configuration above without slipping or loosening. Hanging a camera of any price on a piece of metal strapped to a tree seems to be an iffy situation at best. There is nothing iffy about the Platypod Ultra support system.
My next post shows another solution to the no-room-for-a-tripod problem.
Gear list with links
- Platypod Ultra
- Really Right Stuff BH-55 ballhead
- Canon 1Dx Mark II
- Sigma 24-105mm f/4.0 DG HSM Art lens
Kevin Ames
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