This year before I headed to CES 2010 I wanted to make sure my DSLR tripod could be used also as a steadicam by hacking one of the legs so I can use it as a handle. Well, I failed doing that because this Manfrotto tripod is simply not going to be a steadicam by any means but recently I discovered another use for it, as a DSLR car mount.
By having one of the legs of the tripod being able to rotate fully 360 degrees, this allowed me to stabilize my DSLR by pointing the leg up at the ceiling of my vehicle.
Anyways, it’s very simple to do. If you have a Manfrotto tripod, it is likely that your legs are limited only to around 45 degrees but you can easily unscrew the 3 hex screws (as seen below with arrows) and reverse one of the tripod legs. You can also do it for all the legs if you want to, that will give you full freedom of your tripod although it might actually not be a tripod anymore.
As you can see with the big circle, I reversed the tripod position and now it can rotate fully 360 degrees, allowing me to use it as a DSLR car mount.
I know there’s like a DSLR windshield car mount you can buy (Manfrotoo V241 on Amazon for $149.89!) but it costs more than my tripod (Manfrotto 7302YB for about $100 on Amazon) and can only be used near glass or stable surface.
Anyways, I just had a chance to take a photo of my setup, it could be helpful for those who are trying to take videos inside your car.
Oh yeah, last year, I used this similar setup and took a video at Black Friday:
