Whenever you see wide shots of a TV audience, you see huge contraptions with cameras on them, enabling TV folks to create fantastic swooping shots. If you want some of that in your life, Joby can help with its Action Jib kit. It’s great to get close to the action and to make the people around you think you’ve lost your mind by sporting the most outrageous selfie stick ever.
Jokes aside, and while the Jib kit can be used as a selfie stick, there’s a reason why jibs are a thing in television; being able to get down low and up high from a safe distance is a fantastic tool for photographers and videographers alike. Joby’s simple rope-and-pulley system to tilt the jib head up and down means that you can create some really cool effects along the way, too.
Pictured: the Jib kit, and how far it bends when you connect two kits together. Obviously, it wasn’t quite built for that. Not pictured: My deep shame and complete lack of self-respect.
The kit can hold a small smartphone (although it handled my oversized iPhone 6+ relatively securely), an action cam or a compact camera (remember those…?). Retailing at just under a hundred bucks and available now, the kit consists of three aluminum poles that screw into each other and the ropes and hardware needed to make your next action-film inspired masterpiece. The multi-pole approach means that you can buy several kits and make the pole as long as you like. It collapses into an easily portable size and at 23.5 oz (660g) it’s hardly going to break your back. It does take a while to assemble all the pieces, however, and the string-and-pully system is a lot more fiddly to assemble than you’d imagine.
Also smart: The pole threading is the same as you find on a standard painter’s pole, so if you have one of those lying around, you can add some additional distance to your photographic shenanigans. Silly? Absolutely, but for the right photographic projects, it might be just the tool to lift (yes, I’m going there…) your photography to the next level.