Photo answers review
Photo answers rating 
Flick through a few pages of a car magazine and you’ll quickly come across a few inspiring images of cars travelling at speed with blurred backgrounds. You might think that these shots are only achievable by professional car photographers who take their life in their own hands at breathtaking speeds, but in reality they’re taken off-road at just 3-4mph with a specialised camera rig! If you’re interested in achieving similar results there are a couple of options open to you: you could design and manufacture your own rig or, if you don’t fancy the hassle, you could buy a professionally made one that’s ready to use straight out of the box, like the Hague telescopic suction mount.
The sizeable kit of parts features two Manfrotto pump cup suction pads, four superclamps, two clamp connectors, the telescopic pole, a double ball tilt head and a large camera plate. This box of clamps and accessories may look extremely daunting but actually it’s incredibly easy to put together. Before heading out to set up the mount on our vehicle, we watched a very useful and informative video on Youtube that explained how to use the specialist suction cups. This video offered a useful insight into how they can be attached and removed and is essential viewing for anyone who purchases the rig. To see how to prevent damage to you vehicle and expensive camera kit, watch the clip by clicking here.
Outdoors, it took around 15 minutes to set up and it’s a job that’s not to be rushed. We started by wiping the surface of the car clean and then carefully placed the suction cup on the bodywork before pressing it down hard. A few pumps on the suction cup and it soon firmly attached. You need to look out for the small red line indicator on the button itself.; when it’s hidden in the base of the cup it’s telling you that the suction is strong enough to mount the telescopic pole, however if the red line is visible it indicates the suction is weak and needs more pumping. Throughout the shoot it’s important to keep checking the red line indicators if you want to prevent the rig becoming loose, which in turn could lead to your expensive camera gear falling to the ground.
With the two suction cups in place, the pair of Manfrotto clamps can then be attached to the short uprights. Opening up the clamps was very straightforward, thanks to the sizeable handles and after sliding in the telescopic pole, we began the tightening process. We worked around every clamp handle one-by-one to ensure all were belted up tight. Next the boom was extended from its 110cm minimum working length to its 188cm maximum working length and clamped into place using the central threaded lock.
At the end of the telescopic pole there’s a Manfrotto 155 tilt-top head, ready for you to attach a camera onto and we attached our Nikon D2X (1.25kg), fitted with a Tokina 10-17mm (350g). The boom flexed marginally as the camera was attached and rather than shooting the right way around, we inversed the camera so it was shooting upside down. Why? Well, shoot the right way up and it’s difficult to clone out the rig, whereas if you shoot upside down, it’s much easier to get rid of the rig later using sky pixels. For a clearer, visual explanation, compare figure 4 to figure 5 in the images section at the top right of this page.
After carefully setting up the telescopic suction mount it was time to set the exposure and plug in a wireless remote trigger. This would enable us to fire the shutter from inside the car while driving at extremely low speed. The key to this technique is to use a slow shutter speed and small aperture to give the impression the car is moving fast, while actually travelling extremely slowly.
After some careful driving around an off-road private car park at no faster than 4mph the suction cups were assessed and there was no red line indicator to be seen. The mount was attached securely to the car for around 30-40 minutes at a time without any problems whatsoever. Once the shots were in the bag, the rig was carefully de-assembled and the suction cups removed using the small rubber lugs, as explained in the earlier Youtube video. The suction cups did leave two circular rings on the paintwork, but these were instantly removed with a damp chamois leather.
Perhaps one disadvantage is carrying around all the individual items for the rig – and the last thing you want to do is start losing or leaving vital parts behind. If this concerns you, try putting all the items in a separate sizeable bag like we did.
To sum up, the Hague telescopic suction mount is a superb piece of kit that can be used with confidence to help you create some truly stunning automotive images. Provided you use it with due care and pay attention to the suction cups your shots will only be limited by your creativity. Dangling your expensive D-SLR off a rig that’s only attached by suction may sound like madness but in all the time that we had the product on test, it didn’t let us down once and fulfilled expectations every single time. If you don’t own a fisheye or wide-angle lens you will struggle to contain an entire vehicle in the frame, so this will be your first major requirement before you splash out £270 for this impressive rig.
To read up more about fisheye and wide angle lenses visit the lens review area of our website by clicking here.
Technical Specification:
Maximum attachable weight: 2kg
Minimum working length: 110cm
Maximum working length: 188cm
Visit: www.cameragrip.co.uk
