Trying to hold your iPhone like you once did a camera can feel awkward. It’s not designed to fit the hands the same way. A selfie stick can free your hands, but can also get you thrown out of a lot of places.
A photographer has come up with a simple device to give you the grip you need with the shooting range of a selfie stick with no danger of impaling others around you.
Grip Dat is a handle with a tilting smartphone bracket. On the grip’s thumb rest is a Bluetooth-enabled shutter release. The gripper can take a quick selfie or detach the base from the grip to take in more of the scene to snap pictures or record video from as far away as 30 feet.
Photo: Grip Dat
Photography with smartphones and action cameras, like GoPro, has empowered millions of people to get creative and search for odd angles and unusual places to make bold pictures. This has given rise to an accessory market to support our urge to document our every activity.
“With all the smartphone advancements, they still present a challenge with unstable, uncomfortable and awkward use,” said photographer and Grip Dat founder Steve Sawitz. “I wanted to create something that solved that issue with functions and applications that go far and wide.”
Sawitz’s Kickstarter campaign to fund the production of Grip Dats exceeded the funding goal on the first day. With 26 days remaining in his campaign, Grip Dat has raised more than $10,000.
Grip Dat steadies the hand but also offers mounting options, like to a bike helmet, to turn your smartphone in a POV camera you can activate remote from an iPhone or Android. The head and bracket holding your device tilts and is also capable of fitting GoPro cameras, Sawitz said.
Photo: Grip Dat
David Pierini is a former newspaper writer and long-time photographer. Considered a luddite by most of his friends, they did not believe him when he broke the news that he would be writing for a technology website. He is fascinated by human nature and would love to cultivate stories about the people driving the tech bus. Reach out to him at [email protected].
