How to build your own overhead camera rig

Gannon Burgett

Gannon Burgett is a communications professional with over a decade of experience in content strategy, editing, marketing, multimedia content creation. He’s photographed and written content seen across hundreds of millions of pageviews. In addition to his communications work for various entities and publications, Gannon also runs his multimedia marketing agency, Ekleptik Media, where he brings his expertise as a full-stack creator to help develop and execute data-driven content strategies. His writing, photos, and videos have appeared in USA Today, Car and Driver, Road & Track, Autoweek, Popular Mechanics, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Digital Trends, DPReview, PetaPixel, Imaging Resource, Lifewire, Yahoo News, Detroit Free Press, Lansing State Journal, and more.

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Whether on Youtube or elsewhere, we’ve all seen the overhead camera shot. While it might seem fairly straightforward, the process is actually quite a doozy to set up, especially if you want to ensure you have proper and even lighting.

Thankfully, for anyone wanting to build their own, Caleb Pike from DSLR Video Shooter has released a video showing how he built his overhead camera rig for shooting hands-on and other product shots.

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The full tutorial comes in at just over ten minutes long. While it might seem like a long breakdown, you’ll need at least that much time considering how many components are required to create the setup and get quality results.

As for materials needed for this particular setup, you can head on over to Pike’s full rundown on the DSLR Video Shooter blog. As usual though, you can tweak this list to suit the space you have available and the gear you have at hand.

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Whether you follow this rig down to every last detail or simply use it as inspiration for your own setup, it’s a great watch for getting down the basic structure and components required to build an overhead camera rig.

[via ISO 1200]


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Gannon Burgett

Gannon Burgett

Gannon Burgett is a communications professional with over a decade of experience in content strategy, editing, marketing, multimedia content creation. He’s photographed and written content seen across hundreds of millions of pageviews. In addition to his communications work for various entities and publications, Gannon also runs his multimedia marketing agency, Ekleptik Media, where he brings his expertise as a full-stack creator to help develop and execute data-driven content strategies. His writing, photos, and videos have appeared in USA Today, Car and Driver, Road & Track, Autoweek, Popular Mechanics, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Digital Trends, DPReview, PetaPixel, Imaging Resource, Lifewire, Yahoo News, Detroit Free Press, Lansing State Journal, and more.

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