How to shoot steady video without a tripod

Here are my favorite smartphone steadycam hacks that will create remarkably steady video when your shooting with your smartphone, iphone or android. When you’re away from home and have an idea for shooting video with your smartphone, you probably aren’t carrying your tripod with you everywhere you go. So how do you get a really steady shot, of yourself or someone else, when you’re just holding your phone in your hands?

The first thing a lot of people do is that they hold their phone in the vertical position – as though they are going to take a picture.

And you don’t want to do this.

Turn your phone sideways and shoot in the horizontal mode. Everything is wide screen and so your video will look a lot better when you post it on social media in wide screen format.

When you’re holding your phone at arms length, it tends to move around – creating shaky video that’s hard to watch. So grab a hold of your phone with one hand (as shown in the video above) and bring your elbow into your chest which creates a very steady support for your camera.

You can use this when you’re interviewing someone and it’s solid as a rock and basically turns you into a human tripod.

A great tool for keeping your video steady is the Stayblcam which acts as a counter weight and allows you to move your phone to follow action shots – and keeps the camera steady and smooth throughout your shooting.

I’d love to see you try these techniques in your next videos – and I’d love to see them. You can share your videos in a place to get positive feedback by joining my Livestream Rockstars group on Facebook at  https://www.facebook.com/groups/livestreamrockstars