I tossed and turned a bit and realized sleep wasn’t going to happen (not feeling too well at the moment) so I got up looking for something useful to do.
I had intended research building a “steadicam” rig for handheld use with my video camera. Let’s face it these things are really just a handle->gimbal->offset weight system. I figured some pipe, a couple of pounds of lead and a universal joint and I was all set. In fact it turns out for some purposes you don’t even need the joint if you are willing to use your own wrist as the pivot.
Anyway, it turns out a lot of people have done exactly that and it looks kinda fun and easy to understand. I will probably wind up building one myself someday soon. (read down to see how an experiment I did turned out).
Basically there are two designs
- The post style offers a somewhat larger range of shots because it allows for easy pan as well as tilt. The downside is that the center of gravity of the system is actually out in front of your hand, and this adds some strain to your forearm. It is worth noting that an arm brace can alleviate this. The Glidecam is like this.
- The crescent style (Steadicam JR and Hollywood Lite UltraLite) have the COG directly above your hand, putting a good amount less strain on some part of your arm but limiting the amount of tilt you can do and almost completely eliminating pan (unless you turn your whole body).
Commercial Offerings
Then I went off to see what the “real” thing for my purposes costs. Here is what I found…
- Glidecam
The Glidecam folks make two models, the 2000 and the 4000. The 2000 would work for the camera I have now and but 4000 looks like the winner for future expansion. A bonus; you can get an arm brace for these beasts and they will hang of a vest if you ever need that. Most importantly, the rig is metal and would be extremely easy to tinker with mounting in the future to a home made crane or dolly.
From Glidecam the 4000 costs $499 new with the arm brace around $169. However, I have seen them show up on Ebay for considerably less used and new you can pick up the 2000 for around $300 and the 4000 for $400 if you look.
All things considered? This is my pick if I could get it for under $200.
- Steadicam
The name sounds familiar. For what I would be using it for the only offering from the folks at Steadicam that makes sense is the Steadicam JR “Lite”. Now, this is (IMHO) a less useful design than the Glidecam but I can see how it would still kick ass. This thing is $499 new, but I see lots of them on Ebay for $199, even the non Jr versions with the LCD monitor can be had in the $200 range.
The fact that this is made of plastic really throws me, I really can’t imagine it being worth the money. I am not at all sure about it to be honest.
- Hollywood Lite
This company has a nice looking rig in the UltraLite. It is running around $399 on the street and seems to offer some advantages over the Steadicam JR, most importantly it isn’t made of plastic.
My Experiment
Well, I had an old heavy tripod int he next room… so I put my camera on it and extended the head elevation pole (not the legs) all the way up and grabbed it lightly about 6 inches below the head. A little practice and I tried some video – amazingly enough, it helped. The video did look smoother.
Obviously this set up is one of those without a gimbaled mount, so it is much like the simplest of the home built designs… with a few minutes at the local hardware store and a sacrificial $15 tripod I could have a decent little item there. Total cost? Probably around $30. Total time? Probably about 3 hours. I can think of a more “deluxe” version that might take 6 hours and an extra $10 but I won’t know till I get to the hardware stoe.
Count me in! Since I can’t imagine a good gimbal is going to show up in my lap anytime soon, this will probably be the right answer.