GV – Miramar – Revere Room Brunch, Dec 2021

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

This is a test of a food and travel coverage. I normally shoot these using my iPhone 11, as I have done here, but instead of my usual Crane M2 stabilizer, I am using my new ShiftCam ProGrip cell phone accessory. I want to see here whether I can use the same moves and techniques that I can with the stabilizer knowing in advance that I can’t. But I expected to be able to use some. I was pleasantly surprised that it worked well with many but not all my moves.

Since the stabilizer will hold the camera perfectly horizontal and vertical if you need it to, I expected to have some roll from left to right with this hand held but more steady grip than just using the cell phone hand held. And that proved to be the case. But when it came to the slider effect with a reveal, it could be passable. the crane up and down’s seemed to work fine as did the pan up and down and pan left and right. These would be better using a tripod which the grip lets you do. Even a monopod would improve them.

It came into its own when shooting food at a table since it let me move the camera faster than a stabilizer will track yet still let me mount a microphone to get the comments by the waiters. But for this test I just used the ProGrip with no accessories to see what the basic kit would do. I did find that with the ultra wide angle built in lens, the body of the grip shows bottom right so I have to remember to pull it out a bit, say 1/3″. I will actually just put some small rubber or foam pads up against the vertical body of the hand grip to make sure I don’t forget. And for food, with the hand grip, I can hold and trigger the phone camera with one hand while pour sauce or syrup with the other. Much more fiddly without the ProGrip.

This does not turn the iPhone into a professional camera, but it does make it a lot easier to shoot professional results than trying to hand hold the cell phone without it and really makes it a lot easier to shoot horizontal selfies without dropping the cell phone. So I am glad I bought it to add to my arsenal of equipment.