I hate tripods. I’m allergic to them, just as I am to lens hoods and flash. To me they smack of conservatism and old-school irrelevancies. That and the fact that they are a pain in the arse to lug about. They don’t suit my ‘ninja’ style of opportunist unobtrusive photography at all.
But alas, I had to buy one this week, because I need to set up a small ‘studio’ in my house to explore the possibilities of stock photography.
A necessary evil, I suppose.
And that led me to notice that in the store the collective legs of the monstrous devices looked like a kind of futuristic mechanical forest.
How ironic to artistically utilise the very devices deemed a prerequisite for professional sharp images by snapping them with a lowly iPhone 4 camera…
I ended up buying a Manfrotto 190CX3 with a 496 ballhead. I mention this only because both the words ‘Manfrotto’ and ‘ballhead’ have great comedic potential, and conjure up to the aficionados of toilet humour and double entendre a wealth of smutty and prurient undertones, bound to stoke the ire of the tripod fascists… 
I’m rather fond of my GorillaPod, which gives you some stability in low light but isn’t an ordeal to carry around. You can wrap it around street signs or hang it from branches, too, which preserves the sense of the ninja – if a slightly more patient one.
This mess of legs really does look like some sort of vicious spider-robot.
Another viewer described this picture as “mechanical armies in rivers of blood”, which I liked, as I do your more specific idea of spider-robots…
The GorillaPod sounds great, but I don’t think it’ll hold my Nikon DSLR
The “river of blood” bit makes this seem just a little more apocalyptic, huh? Beware the Tripod uprising!
They have two models of GorillaPod, at least, one of which is bulkier and intended to hold SLRs, so unless yours has a gargantuan lens I think it should work just fine.
I wonder if any stores will let you try it out first, just to see if your camera will work well with it…