Camera Booms and Chanellocks

As a couple of you know, I've taken up videography as a totally unnecessary extra hobby.  I'm determined to be the best GoPro videographer in all of lovely Port Orford, but on my quest, I already ran into a hitch...

The camera boom I plan to use to attach a GoPro camera to one of my kayaks arrived yesterday and I couldn't figure out how it works.  Me?  Flummoxed by a camera mount?  How can this be?

It's a simple thing, this boom.  An attachment for the camera at one end, an attachment for the kayak mount on the other, and but two unions in between... but it was those unions that got me.  There are no instructions for how to operate the thing in the package, but I figured it out - I'm a darned good tinkerer - except for what was The Most Important Part - how to release the camera.  Sure, sure, it's a simple tripod mount that screws into the camera, but I'm supposed to be able to release the camera quickly, without having to unscrew it.

But how?

I was watching videos of folks "reviewing" this particular contraption, and they could pop the top camera mount off one handed.  Behind their backs.  And most of them showed how they just had to twist a little ring, left to unlock and right to lock, the top section from the rest of the pole.  Why, they even showed little arrows molded into the union pointing in the directions you need to twist it to lock or unlock the unions.

But not on the thing I had in my hands.  No arrows, no friendly "LOCK" or "UNLOCK" molded into the union.  Nothing to indicate what I, someone completely unfamiliar with the doohickey, should do with a camera boom that seemed to be all in one piece.

You need to be able to take the camera off the boom quickly to protect it when launching and landing a kayak - even in the monstrous 8-inch surf common along Dock Beach - because a clumsily executed jump into or out of my kayak can cause it to roll just enough to distribute a couple of pounds of the finest grit sand found anywhere on Earth over and into everything in or on the kayak.

I can clean my fly reels and stuff.  I can't get inside to clean electronic devices.  Thus, electronics - even waterproofed units - get tucked away until it's safe to get them out, so I must be able to pop the camera off the boom and tuck it away, too.

Four frustrating hours later, I called the stupid we-don’t-include-instructions company and reached a guy who claimed to be the owner.  "Do these things disassemble?"

"No."

"Not even to pop the top mount off?  I'm in a kayak, I need to be able to remove the camera quickly, without unscrewing it.  If I can't, the thing's useless to me!"

"Doesn't it have little arrows on it?"

Well, I'll leave it to your imagination how the conversation went from that point.  I promised to call him today so he could have 24 hours to figure it out.  Then I went back to searching the internet for a clue, muttering unkind words about cameras, camera booms, and fellows who own a company but don't know diddly about the products they're foisting on an unsuspecting public.

Finally, three more hours and at least a hundred How To videos later, in the middle of Page 5 of the long list of videos (many put out there by the company itself) I found the answer I needed.  I have the newest version of the boom and some random guy from somewhere (he's not important) had posted a video showing his older boom and one of these newer booms... and you don't twist these new ones, you simply press in on the same ring you once twisted at the proper spot to lock it, and press on the opposite side to unlock it.  Couldn't be easier if somewhere, someplace - someone other than a random guy in the middle of Page 5 of a long list of videos - had mentioned it.

I may send the thing back just in protest of the stupidity of that oversight.  With a note to the owner of the company suggesting that he should at least have the most rudimentary understanding of the things his company makes.  And for pity's sake, was it impossible to make the formerly twisty ring differently?  So it didn't look like something you’d twist?

To do something differently so it couldn't possibly have flummoxed me for eight excruciating hours?

I'm happy I didn't take a pair of Channellocks to it.  As my Daddy always said, "If it doesn't work, force it.  If it breaks, you didn't need it anyway."

Sounds like you should make a video about it to help other people!

Nah!  It's going on the kayak I'll give to my Granddaughter - the one who took off with both of my Hero4's - and I think two free cameras and a free kayak is enough help. That's cow flop. I probably will while I figure out making videos and editing them, even if they end up at the bottom of page 17 of the list.

The behind my seat mount I'll put on my kayak will be homemade, so I'll know how it works.