DV Info Net - Seven Jib

Whoah whoah whoah! Get in line people! Lets keep this orderly!

heh.

Ok, I'll keep this short. (which, for me is still long)

This first part is all introduction/background. You can skip to the next section for just jib info:
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BACKGROUND

I have a truck filled with lighting and grip gear that I use for my own projects and also hire out with me as grip/gaffer. This means that I need the variety and flexibility to work with a wide variety of cameras and the shooting styles of various DPs, while at the same time I have a personal interest in having gear that works the way I personally want to work.

It comes down to a "bang for buck" equation, mixed with how much room I have in the truck and also the shots I personally want to achieve. A long arm jib/crane sounds sexy but its the rare exception that a really tall rise is what people want. It tends to be called for by account executives playing director rather than actual DPs.

So, for location setups or music videos or shots that need a tremendous amount of camera control, I have a ride-on crane. It takes the camera up to 11 or 12 feet along with the camera operator and even a focus puller too. Its a lot of counterweight and around 15 minutes setup time (with two grips), but gives the ultimate in off-ground camera control.

For versatility and locations up stairs, I bought an advantajib. It has a 10 foot arm with a hydraulically controlled tilt and a wire-pan. Its an amazing piece of kit and works really well, but there are a few drawbacks. For one, its slow to set up. With two of us, i can get it less than 8 minutes, but there are a bunch of little fiddly bits that require care to organize when packing down, so packdown tends to take 10-15. Another issue is that it takes a bit of a learning curve to operate. Its not bad at all, but if i'm freelancing as grip, then the camera op is going to expect to control the camera. If they can't nail shots the first time they get frustrated with the jib. If i'm doing my own shoots all is good, but under time pressure on a shoot with a frustrated camera operator, i really needed a more traditional solution. The last issue is weight. The advantajib rocks for dslr and dv cameras, but can't handle more than a 15 pound rig. If i'm on a shoot with film, cinealta or red, forget it.

So that brought me to needing a third jib/crane. One that I could set up and tear down lighting fast, plop a ball head on the end and let the cam op go nuts. Shoots generally run behind and *any* delay setting up a jib often results in the jib shots being scrubbed.

With that gear and those options at hand, i set out to find the perfect short-arm jib.

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OPTIONS:

When it comes down to it, there are only a handful of fast, strong short jib arms.

my requirements: Very fast to set up. Minimal parts. Obvious setup/teardown process. as compact as possible.

portajib. This one is built like a tank. I really wanted one just to be "industry standard", but the setup video on youtube blew my mind. Its extremely complicated and if I ever left a student to pack it down, i could guarantee something would go wrong.

kessler: A lot of people rave about them, and I dig my cineslider, but I really wanted something beefier and faster.

Vancejib: Very fast, very robust

Seven jib: Very fast, very robust.

I wish i could do a comparison between the vance and seven. I live in rural new zealand, so i had to pick one and cross my fingers. I honestly cannot remember what made my final decision. I think the seven folds down smaller?

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The Seven Jib

I'm extremely happy with the Seven. It ticks almost all the boxes.

Lightweight: My 71 year old mom brought it with her while on a visit. Even in its hard case, it came in under the baggage weight limit.

Fast: People are used to some crazy slow jibs. I keep winning on-site bets saying things like "i'll have the jib ready to go before you finish that static lock-down shot". The longest part of the setup is screwing the camera bowl to the jib. By myself, not rushing it takes about 90 seconds from opening the case to being ready for the camera. In a hurry, i've easily cut that in half. 45 seconds from cracking the case to
threading the bowl. With a second grip I have no doubt we could get the jib from the case all the way to counterbalanced and rolling in under a minute. Normally you don't need to surge like that, but still. Its very fast. Threading the jib to the sticks and threading the support rod together are the only things that take any time at all.

strength: I did a commando shoot with the red this last week. We were grabbing b-roll all around the city so fast build/pack was essential. At the same time, we were shooting the red, which weighs quite a bit. My jib-legs are super beefy (i think they are the 528xb manfrotto legs) and handled the load without flenching. I was a little bit worried about how the jib would take all the weight, but it didn't seem to flench. Under the weight of the red, there was flex, but it didn't translate into bounce, just tension across the rig. I was concerned about the hinge that isn't locked down, but as designed, the weight of the camera pulls down on the hinge so its very solid. If you are trying to impress the client, the flex can look like the jib is straining. From a performance and safety issue, I had no issue with it.

I already have small 5kg weights for my advantajib (which cannot use larger weights or they get in the way of operation) so I asked Douglas (the seven jib dude.) to make me a custom extension bar that is also threaded. This allows me to use less weight and to physically get enough weights onto the threaded bar to counterbalance a heavier rig. He made up the part i wanted for an extra $100. The extension means I can counter a red using only 30kg of small weights, or fly a lighter camera with even less. The extension works perfectly and the price was great. I use an extra barbell-spinlock on the jib to spinlock against the threaded extension, just in case it has any desire to unthread itself.

Size:
The seven packs down ridiculously compact. The weight bar slides into the body and the nose folds back on itself. The whole rig packs into a shotgun carry case and still only uses about 75% of its length. I can easily toss the hard case in the back of my hatchback.

Shortcomings:
The one beef my cam ops have had (and everyone has complained about this) is that the jib does not have a pan lock. With a short arm, you often do straight lifts (to minimize the obvious arc movement), but without a pan lock, its easy to drift. Now... i think i understand why there isnt one... By the time you get the jib built and weight on the ends, there is a tremendous amount of torque on the center pivot. On my ride-on the pan lock is more of a suggestion as if you forget its on, you can totally still do a pan, abrading or shearing whatever you were trying to lock/brake with.

Although I can see why they'd choose to not put a pan lock on (something to get broken/ground off), its still something that would be nice. I personally would like to see a single pan lock position where you place a beefy steel pin into a receiver. it would take a bit of robust addition to the jib, and you'd only be able to pan lock in one position (so you'd have to adjust the whole base around until it lined up) but for a series of repeated vertical moves, this would be very good.

Price:
For what it is, i think its cheap. I paid around $1700 including domestic shipping and the hard case.

Here are some photos from my guerilla shoot:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/attachme...1&d=1307138892
The vinten head was a bit under spec for the red, but the 100mm bowl fit right onto the seven.

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/attachme...1&d=1307138892
You can see a bit of the flex in this picture. Most of it seems to come from the two joints, so its not really the steel flexing. In this shot we just needed a tall rise above a hurricane fence. Since we didn't need to adjust anything on the camera we took the sticks up to full height. This allowed the camera to travel up to around 10 feet, which was great for the shot.

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/attachme...1&d=1307138892
The fence is 6' tall, with the camera several feet above that. This illustrates the potential height as well as the limitations of a short jib arm. You *can* do taller shots, but if you go above eye level, you need to grab a ladder in order to pull focus or follow a subject. In this photo the base of tripod bowl is just at my fingertips and i'm 6' tall. (we just controlled the move from the back)

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/attachme...1&d=1307138892
Sorry i didn't get a better picture, but this is the case the seven came in. Its skb, rugged and really quite small compared to other jib solutions.

A student watched me build the jib on a shoot. We were short on time and I was in another room shooting so i asked him to begin tearing it down. I expected he'd at least get the weights put away, but when i came back out it was packed up perfectly. Just from watching the one build, he figured out how it should break down and pack into the case. This would NEVER happen with any other jib i've used. I could actually see dry-hiring this thing out.

Anyways, thats all that comes to mind right now. If you have a flood of questions, please holler. I'm pretty objective with my gear and am happy to be critical. There are no specialty film gear shops on this island, so I'm often at the mercy of dvinfo reviews when I buy gear. To return the favor, when I buy something not covered already, i try to share my honest feedback as well.

Cheers!
-Andrew