The camera jib, or camera crane, is a device used to dynamically lift and move the camera. You have seen shots in movies using a jib when the hero gets in a car and the camera raises up in the air to see the street or the town as the car drives away.

Looking around the web I saw a lot of professional and amateur jibs and decided that I should make my own. I decided on using a parallelogram construction, which keeps both ends of the jib level no matter how you lower or raise the arm. This means one major pain is removed when operating the jib. Some other models I saw consisted of a single arm with a pulley system to manage the camera angle. The problem with that is you ALWAYS have to be fiddling with it if you want to move the arm at all.

I must thank my neighbors Dan (for supplying me with the piping), Tom (for his excellent welding skills), and my friend Joel (for his drill press and power tools and patience!)

The arm consists of two 10 foot sections, each which can be used as a small jib if you need to shoot things in closer spaces or indoors. When put together the arm spans about 21 feet tip to tip and can be raised to a height of about 15 feet in the air above where the tripod is standing. I have a camera on each end of the jib - the far end takes the pictures, and the near end (the operator end) shows what the other camera sees so the operator can frame the shot they need. Counter weights are added to the near end.

Here is Tom (our sound guy) playing with the jib outside the Channel 9 Studio. We counter weighted it so that he could move it around with just one finger!