Tripod Information

Fig 1: Tripod folds fairly compact	Fig 2: Tripod legs telescope out
This particular brand of tripod is "Velbon", but I know absolutely nothing about the various manufacturers. This was simply a tripod my wife had for some of her own photography. The legs telescope, top/base can be rotated ninty degrees allowing camera to be positioned vertically, has a built in level bubble to make sure entire unit is level, and has a hand crank to raise/lower the camera.
Fig 3: Front shield larger cutout	Fig 4: Extra foam shield around lens
The foam shield in front of the camera box has a hole cutout larger than the actual camera lens. The camera/tripod is located such that the extended camera lens is sitting just inside front edge of the foam shield. The extra shield is placed around the camera lens and floats freely up and down depending on beer can size.
Fig 5: Camera vertically against front shield	Fig 6: Tripod hand crank to raise/lower
The photobox in this picture is simply sitting on a couple of packing boxes, but any level and flat surface would do. The camera and tripod are positioned with camera vertically, extra floating shield flush with front of camera box front shield, and tripod leveled (very important to have can perfectly level for cropping of images). A small hand held remote is used to snap actual pictures, and other than raising/lowering the camera by using the tripod hand crank the camera does not move between different pictures. The photobox top filter is removed, can replaced or rotated, and next picture snapped, all without touching the camera. I have found the hand held remote a great feature since it removes all possibility of minor camera movement which may occur by manually pushing the button to snap picture.
Fig 5: View from the inside