David Papp Blog

How to Avoid Shaky Smartphone Videos

As transcribed from my video: https://youtu.be/aDiDzkPpsd0

“What kind of selfie stick should you purchase in order to get better video? And why would we do that? We call that the shaky cam effect where you’re doing a self-recording of a video and you are hand holding the camera which is shaking a bit.

Options For Avoiding Shaky Cameras
Options For Avoiding Shaky Cameras

There are stabilized selfie sticks. One name brand is called the DJI Osmo. The DJI Osmo version 2 is the latest version and there are many other equipment manufacture (OEM) no-name brands of selfie sticks that you can buy again on Amazon for under a hundred dollars. The DJI costs a little bit more.

The way it works is you put your phone in, you clamp it down and as soon as I power it on, you’re going to see that it’s going to level itself out. No matter what I do with the selfie stick, it’s keeping the phone level. I can go like this and it will be a very smooth video experience that it is recording of me. I can even move it with my thumb to control what direction I would like the camera to go. This enhances the video watching experience regarding a video that you quickly recorded.

You should also have solid audio. I have an explanation of audio in a separate video.

Another option that you can consider are little flexible tripods, mini tripods, that are easy to travel with. Maybe you don’t want to spend a $100 to $200 on a stabilized selfie stick but rather want to place down your phone at some location. This one you can see is very tiny and this other is more heavy duty. The reasoning behind that is the weight they can hold. If I put my phone on here, it might crumble because of the weight. The beauty of these is that you can wrap it around a post, a guard rail, a tree branch. You can put it on a picnic table, you can put it on a beach or a rock, you can go and put it on the table in front of you, and it is a great way so that you don’t have to carry a full-size tripod with you, but you can achieve very stable video being recorded of yourself.

Remember the goal behind all of this is to avoid you handholding your phone otherwise you get the shaky cam effect.

These flexible mini tripods are very inexpensive. One brand is the Joby GorillaPods and there’s many other OEM versions of this. They even have even heavier duty versions that can hold a full DSLR camera with a microphone on it. Pretty cool to look at if you want shop around, but I would recommend something very simple like this if you’re traveling and you want be able to have stable video recording yourself.”