Nikon Coolpix A1000 Compact Arca Tripod Plate

thingiverse

This is the first one of these custom compact arca-type tripod plates I designed, and it's a bit cursed, but there's a good reason for it. The Coolpix A1000 is one of my favorite horrible cameras. In most lighting conditions it takes horrible pictures, and it's really poorly designed, but I always have it in my backpack because I enjoy doing bird & wildlife photos and having that crazy zoom range in a pocketable form factor greatly increases the amount of cool wildlife sightings I'm able to capture and share. However, horrible optics and sensor performance aside, it has a couple annoying design flaws. This fixes one of them. On the a900, the screen flipped up so you could take a selfie or group picture. On the A1000, there's a viewfinder now, so instead of doing a marginally more complicated flip up mechanism (see the Fuji X-E4 for how this should have been done), Nikon made the screen flip down. The big problem here is that if you want to take a group picture or a selfie on a tripod or a selfie stick, the tripod mount is DIRECTLY behind the center of the screen. So what this crazy bottom plate contraption does is give you a standard arca-type tripod plate, positioned ALL the way over to the other side, so that you can mount a tripod or a selfie stick and still see the screen when it's flipped down. The plate includes a strap connection point so you can get your wrist or neck strap connectors out of the way of your hands by putting them under the body. I've tested it with these screws: https://www.mcmaster.com/92220A181/ Just get a 1/4 20 screw that is about 1/4" long, with a head no wider than 0.375". I highly recommend using a small piece of non-adhesive friction tape between the plate and the camera body to prevent movement, since this one doesn't really brace against the body at all, and the tripod will be mounted all the way at the opposite end from the screw. I've used Duck brand, I imagine anything similar will work fine. https://smile.amazon.com/Duck-393150-Friction-4-Inch-Single/dp/B0000CBIAT ⚠ Disclaimer! Use at your own risk! I have been using 3d printed tripod plate + strap connector combos for years with no problems, but ultimately the safety of your gear is up to you, and I take no responsibility for any damages caused if your copy of this design breaks or does not work with your gear. I printed mine with 30% infill, 6 perimeters, and 9 solid layers top and bottom for strength and stiffness. This still flexes a little... People who are more experienced at 3d printing than me might have ideas about how to make this stiffer. This design is so old that I got about a year's worth of design prototypes through Shapeways before I had my own printer, and their MJF PA12 material seemed to make this a bit stiffer than I can with PLA.