DIY Three Axis Camera Clamp

I am a photographer, videographer and general DIY guy. I own one of those flexible miniature tripods and love it. You can wrap the flexible legs around things and use it to clamp your camera to things for some great pictures. There are times when you just need a little more strength and the ability to feel safe about a camera mount. I have seen several methods for doing this and, as any good creative person will tell you, there is nothing like combining other ideas already out there. I worked a video shoot once where the camera man had a tripod head mounted on a piece of wood. He used a couple of C-clamps to mount it to a ladder for over head shooting. There is a great but simple monopod design using a 1/4-20 bolt and a three foot dowel someone has already done.  I needed to take pictures of a counter with the camera mounted to the cabinets and looking downward. You can't really get a tripod in there so the "Clamp" idea was born. Total cost is about $15 bucks, depending on what is in your hardware drawer,

Time to head to the local Home Depot. I found a clamp that ratchets and will open to about 4 inches. It was also resin based and would be easy to drill a hole into. All the bolts are 1/4-20 which means 1/4 inch in diameter and 20 threads per inch. This is what all cameras from my Kodak easy share, Canon point-and-shoot, and DLSR's use. Here is what else you will need:

• Several 1/4-20 eye bolt
• One 3 1/2 inch 1/4-20 bolt
• One shorter eye bolt
• A couple 1/4-20 wing nuts
• Bag of 20 1/4-20 nuts
• Bag of 1/4" washers
• 4 larger diameter washers

On the tool side, you will need a drill with a 5/32" drill bit (next size larger than 1/4") and a couple of wrenches.

Drill a hole large enough to fit the 1/4-20 bolt through. I drilled two but ended up using the front one only. Plus the washers did not fit into the other one!

1. Insert the 3-1/2" both through the hole using a washer on each side
2. Using one of the 1/4" nuts tighten the bolt down to the clamp
3. Place the 3-1/2" eye bolt onto the first bolt. Attach it in the middle using hardware stacking as shown below.
   1. Nut
   2. 1/4" washer
   3. Larger washer
   4. Eye bolt
   5. Larger washer
   6. 1/4" washer
   7. Wing nut
4. Repeat this with the smaller eye bolt mounting in the middle of the first eye bolt.

Before mounting a camera to the Clamp, you need to thread a nut on to each of the three exposed bolts. This lets you screw on a camera, then tighten the nut up against the camera base to hod the camera in position. With three posible mounting points, the Clamp can be securely mounted and then the best mount for camera can be determined. 

With three axis of movement the Clamp allows you to be very flexible in camera position and mounting. This example shows my Canon point and shoot clamped to my kitchen cabinet. Thanks to the soft rubber clamping surface, it is safe for most surfaces. 

To positon all you need to do is decide which is the best mounting point and then loosen the wing nuts and slide the bolts around. When you get the right position, just tighten everything down. This is great for time lapse photography too, as the clamp will hold its position. I did a time lapse with the flexible grip tripod a while back and had it slide about ten minutes into shooting.

Enjoy!

Jules