A new tripod

My new tripod finally arrived this week. I ordered it weeks, perhaps months, ago and it finally shipped. It was risky to order a tripod basically sight-unseen with no reviews or anything other than a single marketing picture that was on a number of sites, but for $30 it was a gamble I was willing to take.

Read on for some pictures of the Bogen Manfrotto Modo Pocket 797 'tripod.'

I don't remember how I stumbled across this little fellow, but the marketing picture looked interesting so I investigated. The blurb from B & H had this to say:

• The Bogen/Manfrotto Modo Pocket Tabletop Tripod is an ultra compact tabletop camera support that folds up completely flat. It is designed to provide support to any point & shoot style camera that features the universal 1/4"-20 tripod thread, both centered and off-centered. When not in use, the Modo Pocket folds up flat underneath the camera, and can stay attached to it at all times.
  

Well, that sounds interesting. A tiny little 'tripod' is just what I needed for my Canon G9. I've owned a -ton- of 'pocket tripods' over the years, and none of them have been very good. The small lightweight ones were too flimsy, the ones that were stable enough to trust were too bulky. Bogen Manfrotto is a well respected company and the design was vastly different from other 'pocket tripods.' The picture didn't really make it clear how big it was, there was barely any information on the web about it (even on the Manfrotto site),but I bought it anyway.

First off, it really is as small and 'leave it on at all times capable' as they claim.


And it really is pretty stable. The string you see in this picture keeps the front and back legs of the 'tripod' a fixed distance apart - so they don't slide apart causing your camera to fall.


There are more pictures in my Bogen Manfrotto Modo Pocket 797 Flickr set, so if you are interested in buying one of these check them out.