[CES 2010] Tiffen Reveals Their Steadicam Smoothee For The iPhone 3GS, Droid And Flip

By Andrew Liszewski

Because of their compact size and light-weight designs, video-capable smartphones and pocket-friendly camcorders can be rather difficult to keep steady when filming. But that won’t be an issue any longer since Steadicam-Tiffen, the company that pretty much wrote the book on camera stabilization, has revealed their new Smoothee stabilizing device initially designed for the iPhone 3GS, the Droid and the Flip. Now in order to use one of the devices with the Smoothee you have to place them in a special case, but besides providing a quick-release mount, the cases are actually strategically weighted for each device ensuring the setup is always in proper balance.

What that means is that you don’t have to go through the calibration and tweaking process like you would with larger Steadicam rigs, making the Smoothee extremely consumer-friendly. Of course there will always be slight adjustments needed, but those are done with a couple of easy to use knobs that really only require the slightest of turns to put the Smoothee back in perfect balance. At this point there’s no pricing info for the Smoothee or even an ETA since it was just unveiled at CES this morning, but all you cellphone cinematographers no longer have an excuse for posting poorly shot videos to YouTube.