This
is my tripod desk. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Actually, that's a lie: I've never seen anyone else with a tripod desk,
and that's crazy to me.
Do you want
a standing desk that improves your posture, or maybe that you just
can't stop forcing into casual conversation? This is the
height-adjustable standing desk you can take anywhere. Every
year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, I know I'll wind up
standing in line for an hour or more while I wait for an important event
to begin, and I can't afford to stop working. A tripod desk means never
needing to awkwardly find a place to sit or precariously cradle my
laptop in one arm while banging out letters with another hand.
Instead, I
just pull out my laptop and this flat aluminum surface—to which I've
attached a tripod quick-release plate—then pop it on my ultralight
tripod, release the tripod's telescoping legs, and suddenly I'm as
comfortably busy as ever. It's also the perfect conversation starter if
you ever find yourself waiting in line for an Apple product,
or in a park on a sunny day, or anywhere really, because a tripod desk
is not something most people can look at and not comment on.
So now you're excitedly wondering: Where do I buy a tripod desk? And the answer, the truly magical part, is that you don't.
Like all of life's most worthy possessions, the tripod desk is made,
not bought. Particularly if—like me—you're a cheap son-of-a-gun.
What you'll
want to make your own is a tripod tray with a nice simple 1/4-inch
universal tripod mounting hole, rather than something that comes with a
stupid cheap purpose-built tripod of its own. You want something you can
just toss on the existing camera tripod that you already carry around.
Pop off the camera, pop on the laptop. Done.
It's not
quite as easy as it sounds in theory, unfortunately. It was hard for me
to find a good tripod tray, and I don't honestly know which I'd
recommend to you now. I picked my Onyx tray a few years back because it
was the only one that was light, cheap, and relatively flat so I can
toss it into my backpack or messenger bag with no trouble.
If you do
go looking for a tripod desk for your own tripod, I'll leave you with
this advice: make sure your tripod ball is up to the task. If your ball
isn't big enough to support the weight of a hefty DSLR zoom lens, it's
not going to support the weight of your big laptop either. I had to
upgrade the ball-head on my Slik Sprint Pro II to a bigger one to keep
the tray stable. The tripod desk is a demanding mistress.
But it's
also a noble one. As you'll find out soon enough, since by now I assume
you're already halfway through building your very own.
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