Sometimes I have the craziest ideas, and they don't always pan out very well. Here's one i'm quite excited about, but i'm not sure how others would feel. For the past few months i've had the idea of working on a 'DIY Crane Kit'. I went through the process of building a few Jibs myself and found that while you can save quite a bit of money, the hardest part to tackle is the mounting brackets.
So after a few designs, I've been working on a cost effective way to have special Jib brackets made that will allow you to make your own cranes / jibs. These brackets will be made from solid steel (very strong and durable), and will be perfectly aligned for smooth crane operation and modular so you can build your cranes to various lengths.
It will be so easy to assemble that today you could have a very small 4ft crane for an indoor shoot, and tomorrow you could have and 8ft., 9ft.,12ft. crane. There's also stuff i've been working on to show you guys how to make telescoping cranes with all off the shelf parts. Who knows what configurations people will have, and once you see these brackets, it will make more sense. I'm not going to go too much into details, but what you see in the box (above) will be pretty much all you'll need to get your DIY Jib started along with a set of instructions (and a video to follow). Oh and of course it will look very professional. Let me know what you guys think? Good idea or not?
Manfrotto 503 Fluid Head
