HOW-TO

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Tips for Working with Camera Jibs

by Jon Firestone

Some tripods have springs which counter this, and gear heads deal with this issue, but I prefer to deal with this problem by under slinging the camera. By under slinging the camera, the pivot point can be brought very close to the camera’s center of gravity, which will allow a full range of tilting, while keeping the tilting force even throughout the full range of movement.

Being an indie filmmaker, I’ve had to come up with some innovative solutions to save money, and still get the job done. I love a good monitor to shoot with, and when operating a jib from the back, you need a monitoring solution. Preferably something battery operated that can be mounted on the jib.

When shooting with HDV, I will set the camera to display its information on the external monitor, so that I can see the focus information. The beauty of many of these new cameras is that they will display in feet or meters what the current center of the depth of field is. I can eyeball it or set focus at different marks and pull focus on those numbers using a LANC type controller. This is great when using a standard definition monitor when shooting HD and still trying to get a sharp focus.

Fortunately, I almost always shoot my jib shots with the lens at full wide. Remember that the perspective change is more evident the closer you are to objects in the scene, so generally I will move the camera in close and shoot with the lens full wide. The great thing about shooting wide is that the camera has significantly deeper depth of field making it much easier to maintain focus. You do lose the separation you get from a shallow depth of field, but what makes jib shots so nice is their movement.

Cheap Monitor Solution

I usually use an inexpensive DVD player with a 7-inch 16 x 9 screen as my jib monitor. These can be bought for about $150 and when in monitor mode can often last nearly 7 hours on their built-in batteries. The screen is 16 x 9 and has a decent picture.

I bought a Polaroid player I had tested and found it would accept a PAL signal as well as NTSC, which was perfect when shooting a Z1U in 25P mode. The biggest limitations to these monitors: they are bulkier than professional monitors, and they lack professional jacks and mounts. I use a Matthews monitor mount with thick strips of adhesive-backed Velcro to keep the monitor in place.

Another advantage to the Polaroid monitor is its ability to invert the image which is perfect for using with an M2 35mm lens adapter, which flips the image in the conversion process. In daylight situations, the intense sunlight will almost always wash out the image on the monitor to the extent that you can’t really see where you are aiming the camera. I’ve improvised sun shades out of foam core and gaff tape. I’ve also used VR goggles for this, which works relatively well, but it takes some practice to get used to. Since the image moves with your head, it is instinctual to move your head to change the framing instead of moving the jib arm.

Jibs can create amazing shots, but they are only as good as the operator. These inexpensive jibs have their limitations, and it takes a little more skill on the operator’s part to overcome these limitations. There are a lot a different types of jib shots, and the more complicated the more practice it takes. I generally tell people that if they want to get into doing jib shots, there are a couple things to remember. You need to practice a lot with a jib to get really good with it. Especially when doing head panning and tilting, while pulling focus, and booming the arm. You also need to allocate enough time in your schedule for the jib shots. There is setup and breakdown time, as well as the time it takes to practice the shot, and it will commonly take more takes with the jib because you add to the fact that the jib has to hit its marks as well.

Jibs

My first experience with a jib was with a little 6 ft. Porta-Jib. These jibs are a bit pricey but are a good quality. The jib I used was an older model with no frills. It took a lot of setup time, with lots of parts and pieces that could get lost. The jib supported a lot of weight and could handle big cameras but had limited movement.

The next jib I worked with was an EZ FX Jib, with the EZ FX Handle. This was a great improvement from the Porta-Jib in terms of ease of setup and also capability. The design was straight forward and was made to set up fast. It could also handle a heavy camera, and you could do pan and tilts from the head easily with the EZ FX Handle. I loved all the new shots that we could do, and the handle allowed us to even control the pan and tilt from a fairly high angle, but this is when I first realized that the pivot was a problem. My brother and I ended up re-rigging the head, inverting the mounting plate and a tripod head to create our own improvised underslung head. This worked well enough that we rarely changed the configuration after that. My brother kept that jib and still uses it to this day.

I later acquired a Cobra Crane 2 jib and had a little trepidation at first. This jib had a nice long arm and the ability to tilt the camera from the base of the jib. It was even able to handle a fairly heavy camera. But I was wary of the fact that it used a tripod head to support the whole jib. When the Jib is loaded with a 25 lb. camera and the weights it takes to counter balance it, the tripod head it sits on is likely to be over the tripod head’s rated capacity. I found a Bogen 3066 head to work perfectly for this, and it seems to handle the weight fine. I made a couple modifications to this jib right away, including a monitor mount, and I replaced their weight mount with a heavier duty mount. I would also commonly mount small cameras, underslung from a Cardellini clamped to the camera’s handle to get shots starting right on the ground. I always use a safety strap when doing this. I grew to really like this jib. Although a little less portable than the EZXF jib, the tilting capability was nice and tilted from close to the camera’s center of gravity which made for smooth tilting. It has its limitations. Mostly the fact that I can only tilt, with the camera looking straight off the end. But overall it’s been a good jib.

My latest jib acquisition was a Dykortech Advanta-Jib Lite. I was cruising through NAB this year and ran across this unique jib. It was designed for cameras 10 lbs. or less but has a nice long arm and a panning and tilting head that is operated from the back of the jib. Unlike most remote head systems I had messed with before, this used a system of hydraulics and cables to get the job done. But the operation was more intuitive than the other heads I had seen in that it used a handle like that of a tripod, and the movements correlated directly with the head of jib. One of the things that concerned me about several of the remote heads was the joystick design of the controllers seems to take a lot of practice to get good at. There is also no tactile feedback. What I liked about the Advanta- Jib was that I almost immediately had a sense of the jib. It was fairly easy to track people with it, and I could feel any resistance the camera was giving me just like a tripod. All this and it didn’t require an additional tripod head like many others do, and it was priced in the range of most remote heads alone. If I had to operate a jib, with a pan and tilt head by myself, this was the jib to do it with. While this jib has some really nice advantages, it hasn’t been without its catches. The setup on this jib isn’t nearly as easy as the EZ FX.