Eliminate the Blur with a Tripod

I've personally never really believed it when someone would tell me that the iPhone's camera isn't bad for a phone. After all, I would take picture after picture and the majority would come out, usually with a string of words which I won't repeat, blurry and unrecognizable. As I hustled around CES last week taking pictures and spilling coffee all over myself, it was actually Chris Hall who so graciously pointed out, in between laughs of course, that it was probably my pitifully shaky hands that was the problem and not the camera itself. As it turns out, he was right, for once, and for the past few days I've been using the Blur Tripod and have formed a new opinion regarding my camera phone.

Priced at $14.95, the Blur Tripod is exactly what you think it is, a tripod for an iPhone. A mini tripod to be precise, which stands about 5.5 inches off the ground or up to 8 inches if you extend the legs all the way. The unit itself comes in two separate parts, the legs and the adapter mount. The legs are made of ultra light weight aluminum wich keeps them portable while still remaining fairly durable. The mount is a simple plastic clip which uses a standard 1/4" 20 thread camera screw size which makes it usable on most any tripod on the market. An extremely nice feature of this tripod is it's adjustably, it can truly be manipulated to be able to take photos from nearly any angle you would ever need, however it does become a little unstable when shifted too far to one side. A helpful tip I found though is that while unstable for taking photos shifting the mount all of the way to one side can help in another way by doubling as a steady hand grip for shooting video.

Mobile Mechatronics didn't stop there though, they also put together a $0.99 Blur Tripod app to accompany the tripod. It offers several features including a Time Delay shot (yay... I can finally take my own self portraits), and a Multi-shot bust, each of which can have their variables changed to fit the need of the situation. The Muti-shot burst includes another cool setting for taking time-lappsed pictures over a 24 hour span. I personally can't imagine not being able to touch my phone for a day but its still a neat idea. In addition, there is also an easy to calibrate level for making sure each picture comes out straight and even. My only real complaint about the app is that you don't have control over what it's focusing on, once this option is added it truly will be a full companion to its hardware counterpart.

Overall, it's a great little accessory that can add a whole new dimension to your phone. If you're someone who would even think about taking decent photos with an iPhone, I fully encourage you to pick this one up.