I bought the pod because there will be times when I want to take something up close / I don’t have an even surface and it will give me something to rest against. So far in the garden testing it has enabled the camera to sit atop a pole, on branches and on a picket fence. The grass was damp down the bottom of the garden and it provided a good base there too. Nice.
I also bought a Gorillapod SLR Zoom. I wanted some sort of tripod but nothing big and shiny. I tested it with a Tamron AF70-300 and it holds that with no real problem. Taking that too into the garden it will wrap (this is with the Canon 50mm) around a steel pole quite happily, around the same picket fence, around a branch – you get the idea. And because it is plastic there are no worries about water / dirt. This weekend I plan on a long walk with Winston and I’ll take both along and see how they work out.
What using both showed though was the tremor I have. Even wrapped around a pole tightly I could not stop the tremor bouncing the image as I depressed the shutter button. So off to ebay I went and I’ve bought a remote control. This will also be really useful when I try and get some pictures of the foxes that visit each night (they take food from J’s hand now) and of course I can get much better setup shots.
There are a couple of pics here.

(Pod was 15 quid from Jessops, Gorillapod 32 inc postage from ebay and the Remote is 15 from ebay. The Gorillapod has Jessop’s cheapest ball and socket head attached – it was 7 quid.)