thewashingmachinepost ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................

one of those really cool doohickys

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in the better weather that we had earlier in the year (ironic isn't it - longest day of the year and islay had gales and torrential rain) i was happy to pedal out on the colnago with digital camera in back pocket in order to snap away at the islay countryside. however, as i may have detailed previously, it was darn near impossible to put the camera back into a rear pocket, and on bumpy, potholed roads, hanging on to a digital camera while negotiating the obstacles rather took the fun out of it all. until i discovered this.

as you can hopefully see from the photos, the doohicky is a solid alloy clamp which bolts onto your handlebars (apparently irrespective of diameter and with small rubber pads to protect the alloy) with a smallish tripod head attached to the top. the tripod head swivels through 360 degrees by means of a small handle that also allows you to lock the head in position. pretty much anything that has the appropriate thread can be fitted to the clamp - i've tried both a digital camera and a digital video camera.

the latter, however, was a slightly ageing canon dv camera with a fair bit of heft for its size. that, combined with islay's less than smooth roads caused a few problems. while the camera remained pretty well fixed to the swivel head, it was really largely unsupported across its length and was apt to rattle and bounce more than is absolutely practical to realise viewable footage. in other words, the video was cr@*~p!

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a smaller. lighter dv camera would be less likely to suffer from these ailments, but i actually acquired the unit principally for stills camera use, since i am (rather unsuccessfully) working on a 'cycling on islay' book and i need pics with which to illustrate said text. for that purpose it is ideal, especially with most modern digital cameras being about the size of a credit card. i have no intention of fitting a digital slr, a type of camera which is likely to suffer the same fate as the dv camera.

the unit is available fromwww.vakantiefietser.nl, though if you don't read dutch, you'll probably be as confused as i was. fortunately, the site's owner eric schuijt, speaks rather good english and responded to my e-mail enquiry. the unit costs 34.95 euros and if you fancy one of these for yourself, e-mail eric on info@vakantiefietser to arrange payment, since the site doesn't support online transactions (to be fair, even if it did, i probably wouldn't understand how to work it:-) a boon to the cycling photographer - or even a bloke with a colnago and a camera

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this website is named after graeme obree's championship winning 'old faithful' built using bits from a defunct washing machine

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as always, if you have any comments on this nonsense, please feel free to e-mail and thanks for reading.

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