Create a robust holding structure for a camera/picavet

Many people have asked me how to actually attach the camera to the picavet that I showed in this post: http://publiclab.org/notes/TedF/08-18-2013/constructing-a-2-90g-wooden-metal-picavet

... so here goes a more in depth explanation with pictures.

My attempt and results

1) Buy very strong durable elastic bands and use nails with a larger head (the larger the easier to loop the elastics into place, but smaller ones work also as you see from the pictures below).

2) Depending on camera used, you may use one elastic and small square of paper to continually hold down the 'take photo button' on the camera also.

3) Fold some thick paper and/or tissue paper into a square of roughly the same size as your camera.

4) Place folded paper padding between the back of the camera and the side of the picavet without nails (see this post for constructing the picavet and placing nails).

5) Loop one elastic around a nail on the top of the picavet, while firmly holding the camera in place. Stretch the elastic along the front of the camera (or underside of the whole assemblage) and loop it back onto the same nail.

6) Repeat with four elastics (2 elastic bands attach to 1 nail so that you end up with four elastic loop ends on each nail). See pictures for resulting attachment.

7) Note that you have to adjust the elastics for your lens to come out freely from the camera, when you turn it on. The pictures below show firstly how the unadjusted elastics would prevent the lens from coming out and in the second picture the adjusted elastic that will allow the lens to come out:

8) Optional: Attach a textile elastic (can buy in any textile store) to camera, to use as extra safety. You attach the other end of the textile elastic to the kite line, so in case some part of your rig breaks (it has never broken for me), the camera rig will slide down the line to you on the ground.

The final assembly will look like this (without safety line) from below and from above:

Questions and next steps

Any questions, just ask in the comments. Improvements very welcome! Thanks to those of you who've already done so!

Why I'm interested

I've used this rig setup lots of times, with adults, kids and in all sorts of conditions. It works really well for me and it's pretty easy and fast to setup.