Saturday, February 26, 2011

Nerd hat!

Been a long time since I posted anything here; going on for two months! Not much has occurred to me to say or even to write down so I can remember it later. Hey, it's winter. It's pretty much just get through the cold days and wait for things to warm up to start living again... :)

And with that in mind, several weeks ago, I was visiting a buddy I've known since we were kids. He's always had a flair for building useful little gadgets from scratch, and while we were in an unusual little hardware store in his neighbourhood, I hit him with a longstanding idea I've had for a hat camera mount. It suggested it only half-seriously, but he took it on. They were selling nondescript baseball caps for two bucks, so I grabbed three and we went home to his workroom. He'd pointed out earlier that he'd discovered that 1/4" wide rods with 20-to-the-inch threads are universal for camera mounts. Using bolts, nuts, and washers to those specs, he drilled a hole in the peak of one of the caps, and voila, the shutterbug nerd hat was born.

Here's what it looks like, unmounted, and with the IR-converted S80 on it. It also works with the HX5V I used to shoot these pictures.



I actually tried it out at my buddy's place... his wife was highly amused at the sight of me wandering around with a camera on my head. I imagine so will other people be this summer when they meet me on the trail. The idea is to video things with an almost human's eye view, while leaving my hands free for photography. Like I said, a nerd hat. :) And just for good measure, here's a quick vid I shot a while ago just to test it out with the weight of the S80... seemed manageable. The cats were unimpressed, unfortunately.

P.S. Excuse all the junk in the living room... they've been "working on" our balconies since sometime last summer... >:/

5 comments:

Jim Grey said...

He speaks!

Maybe you could pick up a cheap entry-level (and lightweight) Canon for the nerd hat, so it wouldn't be so heavy! The S80's a great camera, but it's a little hefty.

katherine said...

Ha! Nerd hat. I like it. You two should market the idea, seriously.

Lone Primate said...

Hi, guys! Sorry for the delay... I don't know why Blogger's not letting me know when folks comment. Anyway, that pesky guy who was posting Chinese links seems to have buzzed off, so I've turned off moderation again.

The S80's right at the edge of what I want pressing down on my neck. But it's refitted for infrared so I'll probably be "wearing" it at some point when the weather gets better. Luckily for me the HS5V is fairly light... a little over half a pound with the battery... so it should be good for getting regular colour vid out of the strolls. What I'd really like to do is work up the guts to wear the thing downtown. :) I'd need some sort of fastener, though, just to make sure no one could steal the hat and the camera in one fell swoop. That, and the nards to show up in public wearing the thing. :)

Heya, Wonderkat. :) That's not a bad idea... I should throw it to Dave. I don't really have a stake in it, but he could probably make a go of it.

Lone Primate said...

I mean HX5V. Why the hell don't they have an edit function for these comments yet?

Jim Grey said...

You want editable comments, switch to Wordpress! It really is a superior blogging platform.