I spent some time walking around the expo floor at ImagingUSA this morning. Wow! It was huge. Way bigger than Photoplus and Photoshop World. It just went on forever. One of the coolest things I found was called “the Polester”, no, not a portable pole dancing kit, but rather a telescoping pole with a mount for your camera at the top.
The inventor and mastermind behind the Polester, Jim, was kind enough to let me test drive it with my LX3. Jim did say he has a DSLR model, but the original inspiration was for use with a compact digital when you need to get a shot that might otherwise be too dangerous or difficult to capture any other way. In just a couple of minutes he had my LX3 mounted on the pole and he handed it over.
You fire the shutter by pulling a string that activates a lever that pushes the button. Simple. I suppose it could work if you were able to remotely fire your camera wirelessly. I took a few shots of the expo hall in an attempt to make a polester-pano. Results below (click for larger). No, you can’t frame the shot, but I could see that it fired each time and then just slightly rotated the pole for the next.
You can check out a video of the Polester in action over at longshotcamerasystems.com and even see Jim (who, as an aside, bears a striking resemblance to my Photoshop hero Pete Bauer). Priced at $199 it may not be for everyone, but what a blast it would be to walk around taking shots from 20 feet off the ground!
Camera: DMC-LX3
Shutter Speed: 1/30
Aperture: f/2
Processed in Lightroom and stitched in Photoshop CS4.
I use it all the time. Works great and you can’t tell if they were taken on the ground. Look like they were taken on the roof. Great for high and steep pitched roofs.
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