Gear for a hand held rig

Contributing and equipment
1

I have used multiple phones and cameras a couple of times on a hand held rig. This is what I use:

As base i use

which is fairly cheap and actually very solid. It has room for mounting a lot of items on it with standard tripoc camera screws, and can be mounted on both a normal and a large tripod screw. It comes with two screws itself, which are fairly easy to tighten without tools.

For mounting cell phones I use

which has a good grip on most phones and can be mounted using a standard tripod screw. Again fairly cheap.

I really like the screws that comes with the aluminium bar. These Bubble Spirit Level Gradienter Cover Cap for Sony DSLR - Black - Free shipping - DealExtreme looks a lot like it, but I would add a rubber washer so it will not loosen that easy.

To keep everything level I got a bubble spirit like this one:
http://www.dx.com/p/triple-3-axis-bubble-spirit-level-on-camera-hot-shoe-3d-103174
but before I got to try it out, my 1½ year old son took it and misplaced it.

3 Likes
2

I would like a cheap stabilizer.

3

Ditto. I have seen some rigs that will keep a gopro-like camera level on Amazon, for about €650. But some vibration dampening would be more useful. I have tried to construct some, but it only makes it worse :frowning:

4

The ANTISTABILIZER!

You could market it as a gag gift people can give to photographer friends… :stuck_out_tongue:

5

Has anyone tried a mount similar to this: http://www.cellfy.co/strap-series-1/giddyeo?

6

I have tried strapping an action cam to my helmet, in much the same way.

Pros:

  • The camera will be placed higher up than an action cam on a bike, giving a better perspective.
  • You will have a lot less shake a risk of motion blur - that is really challenging for a phone on a bike.

Cons:

  • You have not to move your head as you normally do. You must look forward.
  • You have to turn your head, even when a small path intersects with another small path. This gives unwanted angles so you have to look at every picture to delete them.
  • You are aiming the camera without any visual reference. Hope and experience will guide you. At least I had a live preview from my action cam to my phone.

I would use an action cam mounted on my bike over this, any day. But if you don’t have an action cam and don’t map so much you think you will buy one, this is a much cheaper way of mapping from a bike.

7

Thanks! We wanted to test a few mounts that we could start recommending for walking (capturing with your smartphone). Will try a chest mount that could be used both for action cameras and smartphones and see how that turns out.

2 Likes
8

A good chest mount for a smartphone would be great. Now I walk around with a selfie stick as a monopod and would really like to just walk normally to capture.

1 Like
9

For 25$ I hope you also get the fake mustache :wink:
@Sandra Could this by any chance be the Mapillary Wanderer’s kit?

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10

I also hope I get the moustache :slight_smile:

You are right, it is the wanderer’s kit. We are planing putting together a little something that you can use to map with Mapillary walking. One of the things will be the chest mount if it turns out to work for smartphones as well.

Hope you all will participate! We will release more info on Friday. What we sent today was just a heads up.

11

I have cut some vertical stitches of the breast pocket of my shirt. I can push my smartphone throught the hole so that that the lens has a clear view. I have not tested this yet.

2 Likes
12

I had used a setup that worked well except for some deficiencies of the mapillary app:
I wore a messenger bag, with the strap diagonally over my upper body, and the bag in my back.
I put the phone between the strap and my body, horizontally, camera facing to the front and display towards my body. Then I duct taped it to the strap.
The phone was really stable and secure, and made great pictures. Note that the screen touched my shirt.
When I lifted the strap with the phone attacked, I could even fully use my phone.
I have a cheap bumper for my phone, so only the bumper would actually be attached not my phone, which means I could even take out my phone and use it normally, with the bumper staying at the strap.

BUT:
As I walked some time, my shirt got a little bit moist from my sweat, and the touch screen was actuated all the time. Thus, the sequence was always stopping, and random actions were executed, what made it impossible to continue. What would really have helped here is a possibility in the mapillary app to turn off the screen, or at least some kind of screen lock.

13

I also have the accidental stopping the app issue, when I use the phone in a car. In order to get ir closer to the window, and get less car in the frame, I face the screen so it touches the mount. But some times it activates the stop button. An option for e.g. a slider would help here.

14

I have been using this setup a few times. Great and you can hold it over your head so that your out of the view. It is made up of parts from four selfie sticks that have been put together on a rig. However, I have never had four phones at the same time (that was working). Compared to a 360 camera, the amount of pixels are usually a lot higher, but the con is that there is no overlap. http://ainali.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/image20160114_120438019.jpg

2 Likes
15

Nice one! Just saw the boat the other day so need to try it as well.