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Turning the iPad into a mini-production studio

Jefferson Graham
USA TODAY

Jefferson Graham interviews Dave Balsuto on the iOgrapher, which houses and steadies an iPad or iPhone.


VENICE BEACH, Calif. —The kids in Dave Basulto's high school video class were producing shaky videos with poor sound and lighting. So he decided to invent a rig to fix those ills.

His creation: the iOgrapher, which turns the iPad and iPhone into a mini-production studio, with tools to steady the image and add lighting and sound.

The cases for the iPad and iPhone 6 Plus (which will be out in mid-June) sell for $59.99. They are basically a case that happens to be expandable. Instead of holding an iPad with your bare hands, you get a grip that also can fit into a tripod, and it has slots on top for adding an LED light, which you couldn't really do without it.

He started the company with a Kickstarter that raised $17,000 and got the orders started. With sales of 60,000 units to date, he says:

"Two years later, I'm retired from teaching, and we're about to go into 1000 Best Buy stores."

Even though iPad sales have been declining for the past two years, the majority of his sales are still with the tablet. He hasn't produced anything for Android or Windows Phones yet, but hopes to get to Android next year.

How to edit and share video as a citizen journalist

By the time you've dressed up your iPad with a case, lights and a mic, the unit is way bigger than the camera you might have wanted to take with you, but left at home because it was too big.

Dave Balsuto holds the iOgrapher, a rig for the iPhone 6 Plus.

So what's the advantage of going iOgrapher?

Portability, says Basulto.

"Being able to pull it out, getting it edited right there, the size of everything, how you can get into really awesome, tight places, and you don't have this big, bulky camera."

Plus--it's hip. "It's the trendy, hot thing now," he adds.

Judd Slivka, an assistant professor at the University of Missouri, teaches mobile journalism, and has all his students using iOgrapher units with their iPads.

He likes it because "it takes the entire reporting and publishing process into one single place," he says. "I can shoot, edit and publish from one spot, and get to social (sharing) much quicker."

Basulto likes to shoot video with the Filmic Pro app, which allows additional controls like exposure and focus overrides, and white balance tweaking.

He edits in Adobe's Premiere Clip app, while Slivka prefers Pinnacle Studio.

The iOgrapher comes in two models, for the iPhone (coming soon) and iPad. You can mount it on tripods and add accessory lenses. The iPad is shown with an adapter and a Canon 50mm 1.4 lens.

This is part 3 of our Citizen Journalist series. We'll be coming back with more articles, videos and podcasts on the subject of Mobile Journalism (#MoJo) in the coming weeks. We'll be looking at new ads and movies that are being produced on smartphones, and apps that make it easier to edit videos on mobile devices.

What subjects would you like to see us tackle? Let's discuss on Twitter and Facebook.

Meanwhile, click the link below to listen to an extended chat with Basulto, Slivka and USA TODAY video journalist Sean Fujiwara on our #TalkingTech podcast.

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