Joby Gorillapod

Joby Gorillapod

Written by Ken Saturday, 05 July 2008 14:45

Article Index
Joby Gorillapod
Inside the box
In the field
Conclusions
Video review
All Pages

Joby GorillaPod flexible tripod

Price paid £12.57 including delivery from CameraKing via Amazon

You’ve climbed the mountain, or found the one quiet spot on the beach, and you want a group photo - unfortunately, there’s nowhere secure to balance the camera, so you end up missing from the picture. This is the sort of situation the Joby GorillaPod is meant for – it’s a tripod, but with a difference, since its flexible legs can be wrapped around branches, or jammed into crevices, to allow you to take a picture literally anywhere.

 

The GorillaPod has been around for a few years now, and the original compact-camera version has spawned heavier versions for bigger cameras and SLRs. The basic design is the same – three legs made up of a number of articulated ball-joints that can be bent into the shape of a normal tripod, or wrapped around objects to grip them securely.

I’ve had my eye on one for travelling with, not only for my camera but possibly also for mounting a WiFi antenna on for war-driving! I’ll only be looking at the GorillaPod for cameras this time around though.

 

 

 

Inside the box

 

The Joby GorillaPod comes in rather fancy packaging, with the tripod posed, legs gripping a cardboard log, and with a cardboard camera sitting on top. For me, this sort of flashy packaging is a bit of a turnoff – it makes me think I’m paying too much for the product! It does do a good job of demonstrating what the GorillaPod is about though. Thankfully the plastic box isn’t blisterpack, and opens up easily.

Aside from the cardboard props, the tripod is the only other thing in the box. There’s no manual, although there are a few diagrams on how to attach your camera. Slightly confusingly, the box has a warning message on the back telling you to read the enclosed instruction manual for safety information!

The tripod is very lightweight, and will fit in your luggage without throwing you over your weight allowance. The legs are surprisingly stiff – not too hard to bend, but they stay where they are put, and only flex the tiniest bit when you put force on them. Each joint of the legs is surrounded by a small coloured ring (yellow in my case, but other colours are available) which is made of a grippy rubbery plastic – the feet of each leg are tipped with the same rubber. This gives the GorillaPod plenty of holding power even on smooth surfaces.

The camera attachment isn’t quite what I was expecting. It uses the normal quarter-inch screw fitting, but this is embedded in a small plate which clicks into the head of the tripod. Joby suggests you should leave this plate permanently attached to your camera ready for quick set-up, but even though it’s fairly slim it still looks a bit out of place on a compact. A nice touch with this mounting plate is that the screw can be turned using a coin – no need to carry a screwdriver.

The attachment plate was rather hard to remove from the tripod first time around. There’s a small catch that you push in, and the attachment should slide out, but in the end I had to partially screw a camera on before I could slide the attachment out. Given how hard it is to get the mounting plate out, a locking mechanism seems superfluous, but Joby have included one. The rubber ring on the joint below the tripod head can be rotated (with a little difficulty) to stop the catch being pressed, thus locking your camera onto the tripod.

 

 

 

In the field

 

In the field, the tripod works pretty much exactly as advertised. It can be formed into a simple three legged balancing machine, or it can wrap around the strangest objects to hold your camera secure. There’s little vibration, and the legs seem very sturdy – the weak point seems to be the two joints that make up the “neck” – they bend a little too easily. It’s interesting that the heavy-duty SLR-Zoom version of the GorillaPod omits the neck section entirely.

Using the GorillaPod it should be possible to get pictures in places that have been impossible before, and its lightweight and flexible construction makes carrying it easy. It’s clear that Joby have spent a good deal of time on the design as well. Little touches like the coin-friendly screw mechanism, the mounting plate locking system, and the rubbery grips on every joint are very welcome.

I was a little disappointed that the construction feels rather plasticy – despite the nice design, there’s a hint that the tripod is actually very cheap to manufacture. Combined with the overly-flashy packaging, I’m left with a nagging feeling that even at the relatively bargain price of £13 I’ve paid over the odds!

That said, the Gorillapod does its job very well, and despite the slightly weak neck and fiddly mounting catch, I can’t fault its performance – it does exactly what I’d hoped. A slight word of caution – people with larger cameras (that is, any camera that is NOT a compact) would be advised to get the heavier-duty version. I’ve seen a bit of grumbling on the internet from people who found their camera too heavy for the smaller GorillaPod.

 

 

 

Conclusions

 

The Joby GorillaPod is an excellent tripod for people who like to use their camera in odd places – people who travel and still want to be in the picture without carrying too much kit. The clever design features and nice touches more than make up for the slightly cheap plastic, and the GorillaPod should allow you to explore a whole new world of photography, this time with you in the picture as well!

 

Design:   9

Performance :9

Value: 6

 

Overall:  8/10

 

 

Joby GorillaPod

Manufacturers website:  www.joby.com

Bought from CameraKing via Amazon marketplace

Price paid: £9.10  plus £3.47 postage and packaging - £12.57 in total

 

 UPDATE: Video review now available - click through to the next page to watch it!

 

Video review

Ok, heres the video review of the Joby GorillaPod. Bear with it, it starts off slow, but the fun bit comes about halfway through!

(sorry about the poor quality audio in the first section, I did my best to clean it up, but I was fighting against the microphone. I'll use a proper mic next time, promise!)