Selfie sticks are an essential accessory for smartphone vloggers and Pictar takes the whole concept to a new level, with the 2nd generation of its selfie stick, with full control and a new headlight feature.

“The power to capture perfect selfies is now at your fingertips! The Pictar Smart Selfie Stick is the world’s most advanced selfie stick with a six-button control panel built into the handle, allowing a variety of functions even when the stick is fully extended.”  That’s what Pictar said about its previous selfie stick solution, but now the company has a “new world’s most advanced selfie stick”, the Smart-Light Selfie Stick, the “light” pointing to what’s absolutely new in this version: a lightweight, detachable headlight unit with 3 power levels and enough power to run for up to 5.5 hours.

According to Pictar, “the race for the perfect selfie is on. It has been for several years and it is reaching new speeds by the year, going hand in hand with our increasing need to build our personal brand and define our identity through carefully crafted self-portraiture.”

Light, angle & control: the selfie trifecta

But what makes the perfect selfie? “In the past year we’ve been studying thousands of selfies on social media”, says Rafy David, co-founder & CEO of mobile photography pioneer Pictar. “We combined this data with our experience and knowledge in photography and design to determine what is it that makes a good selfie. We were then able to create the ultimate selfie taking tool – The Pictar Smart-Light Selfie Stick”.

Pictar, formerly known as Miggo, was founded by photo tech veterans with vast experience in designing photography gear for some of the industry’s leading brands, such as Kata and Manfrotto. “We hacked the selfie trifecta”, David explains, “the basic elements that make a perfect selfie: light, angle & control, and created the technology that enhances these elements. We believe it’s the best selfie stick ever made”.

The new Pictar Smart-Lite Selfie Stick boasts designated features designed to give the fundamentals of a good selfie a boost. It comes with its own, detachable, professional light, a remote tilt option to catch the perfect, most flattering angle, and a control panel that offers stability and ease of use, ensuring the selfie taker’s casual, unassuming pose.

Control your phone from the handle

The new stick will go into mass production in 2020, following its Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. It is, as noted above, the 2nd generation of Pictar’s Smart Selfie Stick, adding the new headlight feature, as well as additional features to the Pictar app, used to connect the stick to the smartphone’s camera.

The control panel, located on the rubber-coated handle, allows full control of all photographic functions, even when the stick is fully extended. This entails the ability to adjust image brightness, zoom in and out, switch between the front and rear cameras and more, without having to touch the screen of the phone. A tiny electric motor located at the top of the stick, remotely controlled by the main panel, enables tilting between 0 and 270 degrees to quickly and easily reach the optimal shooting angle, without the hassle of folding and extending the stick.

“We live in a reality in which battery life is key”, David explains his company’s choice of ultrasonic wave connection between the stick and the phone: “we didn’t want to use a Bluetooth connection that will drain the phone’s battery and take forever to pair. Instead, we decided to use the next generation of wireless connectivity – a high voice frequency that transmits information between the control panel and the phone”. As for the stick, you can take up to 800 selfies with each charge. The headlight will last up to 6 hours. Both the stick and the headlight are charged via a micro USB cable, supplied with the product.

An adjustable headlight

If you like playing with lights, you’ll for sure get a kick out of the small yet powerful detachable headlight. You can quickly and easily attach or remove it from the stick, use it as an external light source, and adjust its angle when connected to the stick, all the way to the back. For vloggers who need to move around this is a new solution that makes it easier to have your lighting accessible whenever needed.

The Pictar Smart-Lite Selfie Stick is now available on Kickstarter in 3 colors: silver black, millennial pink and smokey white. It is lightweight (210gr/0.46lb with the headlight attached) and can extend up to 83 cm/28.7 inch. It is predicted to retail at $99. Kickstarter price is $85, however early bird discounts will apply. This is Pictar’s 6th crowdfunding campaign, and the company expects it to be its most successful one to date, due to the interest users have for selfie stick solutions that work.