The iPhone 4 is the first iPhone model with a competent stills and video camera, encouraging users to get out there and take pictures.  Plus, the photo-sharing app genre has increased in popularity recently with the release of Color, Instagram and PicPlz amongst others.

On the video side, Vimeo’s new app should encourage people to shoot and upload more iPhone 4 videos, and iMovie makes it simple to edit your film without transferring it to your computer.  As interest grows, so does the need for specialist equipment; so step forward the Mosy Mount.

The Mosy Mount is a tripod adapter kit for the iPhone 4, enabling you to take the best shots possible when handheld work just won’t do.  Our Mosy Mount arrived in a metal box with a transparent window on the top, giving us a glimpse of what was inside.  Open the lid and the first of three different parts is revealed.

• The Mosy Mount.

A rubber slab around 3″ long and 2″ wide, with an adhesive pad on the back; it’s designed to stick to the rear of your iPhone or an iPhone case.  Slightly off-center is a standard tripod screw mount.

• The Mosy Mount Case.

If the thought of sticking a bit of rubber to your favorite case is unattractive, then digging a little deeper into the Mosy Mount’s box will reveal a solution – another Mosy Mount attached to the rear of a simple iPhone 4 case, complete with a cut out for the camera lens and flash, so you don’t have to ruin your own.

• Mini-Tripod.

If you don’t own a full size tripod, or just want something to support your iPhone 4 during video calls, then the included mini-tripod is ideal.

Putting the adhesive mount to one side, it’s the case that drew our attention.  It’s an ordinary black clip-on case offering rear, side and corner protection, and it has a cut-out for the volume buttons too.  It’s sturdy and doesn’t feel like it would crumble away to nothing if you did drop your phone with it fitted.

However, you may not want to use it as your everyday case, as the rear has the Mosy Mount adapter pad on it.  Aside from being an unsightly lump, your iPhone 4 will now weigh 170 grams.  But its attractiveness and additional weight is beside the point, as the Mosy Mount is there to serve a purpose.

The screw fitting is a perfect fit for our tripod, and its off-center position ensured the tripod never appeared in the frame.  The iPhone 4 is securely held inside the case and is in fact, quite difficult to remove, but at least it will never accidentally fall out.

The mini-tripod is lightweight and small enough to slip in a jacket pocket, but its small size means its usefulness may be limited to supporting the iPhone 4 in situations not related to photography; movies and video calls for example.

We took our Mosy Mount-equipped iPhone 4 out along with a fullsize tripod and shot some panning footage at a local marina.  The mount held up perfectly, the case didn’t move and the screw fitting holding our phone to the tripod didn’t budge.  It did a brilliant job, and our video only suffered due to the tripod’s inadequacies!

Our one negative observation concerns the camera lens hole on the rear of the case.  Instead of being one single hole for the lens and flash, it has two separate ones, and the join in-between wasn’t as cleanly cut as we would like; resulting in some flashing.  It didn’t seem to affect the camera’s performance, but it did let down the otherwise good build-quality.

The whole Mosy Mount kit you see here costs $29.95, and we think that’s excellent value for money.  If you’re wanting to explore your iPhone 4′s HD video ability properly, you need a tripod, and therefore you need a Mosy Mount too.

The Mosy Mount is available directly from the company’s website, who also make models suitable for the iPhone 3G/3GS and iPod Touch range.