I learned the single most valuable photography tip in the late eighties from my companies staff photographer - a large beanbag makes a superb photographic "tripod." It's sturdier, lighter, simpler to use, and more versatile than most three-legged support systems, and it costs next to nothing. Ive made two of these BeanPods that have been used on numerous trips and have since been lost. Ive decided to make a new, larger one to support everything from the point and shoot Canon SD400 to the 20D SLR.

Photographers known that one of the reasons their photos are consistently superior to the snapshots taken by people like us is the pros' use tripods. 90% of the pics taken are shot by people willing to risk the clarity of their photos to shaky hands and a swaying body.

But by simply filling a home-sewn cloth sack with dried grain or gravel, even the lowest-budgeted photographer get rock-steady shots evrytime. A beanbag can be poked, pounded, and fluffed to form a comfortable rest for just about any camera-and-lens combination you can come up with, and will anchor that equipment to odd shapes and inclines seemingly steep enough to defy gravity. Here is the start of my project = An old pair of jeans, nylon bean bag pellets, and a sewing needle/thread.

I decided to use plastic bead-filler because beans/rice will rot it the bag gets wet...

Umm, I'm bored just thinking of writing about the sewing... plus I forgot to take interim pics of the whole sticking process. Too many pin pricks and broken threads to stop and shoot pics! Below are the test shots the next morning.....

The trick is to snuggle your camera securely into the lump of beans (or whatever you're using in their place), then press down firmly so that the instrument is comfortably seated in its rest. Once you master the system (which takes the average photographer all of two minutes), you'll discover that it's possible to make successful slow-shutter shots without employing a cable release.

For shooting landscapes—when it's necessary to sacrifice shutter speed in favor of increased depth of field—haul out a beanbag, plop it firmly down on top of a fence post, stump, or rock, seat your camera securely in the bag, and squeeze of dead-sharp shots with shutter speeds as slow as two or three seconds. Because this homemade photo accessory supports so much of the bottom surface of a camera and lens (rather than balancing all the weight at a single point as a tripod screw does), it's often actually sturdier than a traditional three-legged stand. Wind, a slight tremor of the shutter release finger, and even the movement of the camera's own mirror can blur a slow shot taken atop a tripod. That seldom happens on a beanbag.

By placing a beanbag on the ground, you can get an ant's-eye view of wildflowers, mice, mushrooms, insects, and other terrain-hugging forms of life. This down-to-earth perspective adds an interesting new dimension.