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... >:/