Today we have a quick tip submitted by one of our readers – Colin Burt.

We have  all seen articles recommending a ‘bean bag’  as a useful small portable substitute for the tripod you left at home or in the car three miles away.  If you do not have a friendly lady to make one for you, as I do not, you will find a suitable bean bag very hard to buy. 
 
'Bean-Bag'.jpeg

A ‘wheat bag’, intended to be heated in a microwave oven and applied to your sore body part, is better than a bean bag.  The wheat grains are smaller than beans or polystyrene pearls, and being oval they  lock with each other in the bag, and hold the camera well,  either  level or  with a  tipped up end –  give the bag a shake –  on table, rock, ground, log, whatever. They come in all sorts of sizes  -  mine is 320mm by 160mm  which nicely fits under my Nikon D5100
 
What is more they are fairly readily available at ‘craft markets’ like the one at Hervey Bay in Queensland where I bought mine for the princely sum of $4. No big deal if you forget it in the bush.
 
And at day’s end, when you get home with a sore wrist from holding that ‘you beaut’ camera, it can be popped in the microwave for it’s intended purpose !  Or as dPS’s community manager Simon suggests  -  you could open it and cook the contents in an emergency.
 
Colin Burt lives in Hervey Bay Queensland.  He’s a Geriatric Pommy photo amateur having just made the leap from ‘point and shoot’  to DSLR in his eightieth year.

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