Portable Camera Stabilizer - the Strabilizer

Oh look! A once in a lifetime view! You grab your camera, take a bunch of images but alas, they are all soft and blurry.

With the phenomenal Strabilizer (string stabilizer) this won't be an issue anymore! With this you will have two extra points to steer your camera with: your elbows!

This way your elbows will drag your camera down and your hands will continously be dragging the camera up. This will stop your hands from shaking.

You will need:

• Camera screw
• A hard plastic lid or similar. I used a medicine bottle lid, but fancier things can also be used.
• Paracord or other cord, just not too thin. You will need a length that equals the width from one shoulder to the other arm's fingers (about 1 meter/3-4 feet)

Tools:

• A drill with a 5 mm wood bit. If you're a hardcore DIY'er and your drill is dead you can use a screw to make the holes with. Don't ask me how I know this.

If you intend to use it with your smartphone and not just your camera you may want to get a tripod clip. They are really cheap and quite sturdy so I decided to just buy one instead of trying to make one. If you're going to use it with your point-and-shoot camera or other camera then of course you won't need it.

Start with the hole in the middle. Then drill the hole in one side. For the opposite hole use the center hole to see where to drill it.

That's right, plastic is almost always soft enough for forcing a screw through a hole. Force it in and start screwing. You will find that the screw will never fall out if you do it this way (I tried, I put in the screw from the other side first by accident, took me longer than I care to admit to get it out again).

Now put each end of the cord through their respective holes and tie a knot. Don't make it too tight so you can adjust it, then tighten when you have found the right length.

My cord got a little frayed so I grabbed the lighter and taught it who's in charge here!

Fasten your camera to it, grab it and put your elbows through the loop and spread your elbows so the cord is tight. I've attached a stickman to illustrate how to do it (also to show my incredibly awesome Paint skills).

I stopped down the aperture to some f4.5 to imitate a zoom lens zoomed in, but I should probably have stopped it down even more. Nevertheless, the shutter was slow enough (1/6 second) to get blurry. I don't have image stabilization on my old camera. The second picture shows the Strabilizer in use.

I am very pleased with the result of such a simple, inexpensive and lightweight device. I will be carrying it with me whenever I go for a walk in the woods. I hope you like it and if you did I would appreciate your vote. Thank you for reading!