MikeNPhx FILMS

The Modular Tool-less Camera Crane

The following series demonstrates the assembly of our super JIB.

It was built by Michael Brabec (me) and Ben April. The crane was designed to be assembled using no tools and to be able to stored in a compact fashion. It is made of steel tubing which is it major draw back because it weighs more. The vertical height maximum reaches 22 feet high with the Pan/Tilt head. The PTH was purchased off of Ebay and was originaly used with a security camera. The PTH's biggest drawback is its speed but we are looking to enhance that.

The Dolly base is constructed of 2X4's and 2 layers of 3/4" plywood. We built it for our first Jib Project.

The Dolly has four anchor points for the base legs.

The four base legs feed into a vertical pivot point. This part consists of 5 vertical square tubes that hold the base legs together and the center tube has two bearings that the neck slides into. The neck is where the horizontal and vertical motion occurs. Also attached is the Primary. The Primary is the base point for the main arm, the weight tree and the support spars.

Three 4 foot and one 2 foot sections slide into one another.

One vertical and two horizontal support spars are slid into the Primary. Using eye hooks, turnbuckles and caribiners we run two aircraft cables over the top from the base end of the Primary out to the 3rd and 4th sections of the arm for additional support and to prevent the arm from bowing. Two additional cables run along each side. The eyehooks are tightened down using wing nuts and the turnbuckles when tightened act to pull all the pieces together and strengthens it overall.

The Pan/Tilt Head (PTH) is slid onto the end and a cable is run to the neck and bolted in. This keeps the PTH parallel to the ground regardless of the arms angle. Additional eletronic cables are run to control the PTH and run video down to a remote monitor.

A weight stack is slid in to the top of the Primary at the very back end. The weight stack has two horizontal bars. For this application with the PTH and a DVX100A we use about 100 pounds of counter weight.

Here is a closer look at the dolly and base legs/Primary. You can see all the cables and support spars and the weight stack.

Here is a closer look at the PTH.

Here is a detail view of the cable anchor points where the eye bolts, caribiners and turnbuckles come together.

This is a close up of where the base legs are joined to the vertical pivot assembly.

This is a close up of the steerable front wheels and handle bar.

In this view you can see an anchor point for the base legs and one of the dolly levelers.

Here, Ben raises the arm upward.

Here you can get an idea of the reachable height this crane can easily do.

Here it is in pieces. I hope you enjoyed viewing our camera crane. We had a lot of fun building it and it works great. Very smooth motion with little to no jitter at all.