I dont know much about this hardware, but if I used the Steadicam Merlin for the 7D without the harness, will the results still be respectable?

The harness is prohibitively expensive for my low doc budget.

Thanks, Paul

Paul,

You should ask this question in the steadicam section of dvinfo and you will likely get more responses.

I have never flown a 7d, but i owned a merlin and can tell you without a vest... anything but the lightest of camera's will cause fatique. Can it be done? Yes. Is it optimum? Probably not.

My two cents

greg

Actually, there is a ton of information in this thread (in this 7D forum section) already. Sit back, enjoy the advice and all the videos!

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/canon-eos-7d-hd/468059-7d-merlin-steadicam.html

I have never flown a 7d, but i owned a merlin and can tell you without a vest... anything but the lightest of camera's will cause fatique. Can it be done? Yes. Is it optimum? Probably not.I agree 100% any more than a few minutes of use is very fatiguing. Just imagine balancing your 7D on the end of a stick at arm's length for any length of time. On the other hand if you only need short floating/flying shots &/or you have arms like Popeye then using the Merlin without the vest is OK.

How do you focus the 7D while using the Merlin?

Marc, you don't change focus during the shot. You set it up before you roll for that shot. As you can well imagine, with the Merlin you must not/cannot touch the camera whilst flying (and still get a useable steadicam shot a that precise moment). Sure, you can adjust something on the camera and then quickly re-balance it and start flying again (and chop that bit out in edit).

Bear in mind that you are frequently (....not always) likely to be using a wide angle or ultra wide angle and this will have a fairly deep (or very deep) depth of field depending on precise lens, settings etc. so this is much less of an issue than it might sound.

Thanks Andy!

Please direct all further discussion to the thread Andy linked in post 3 above. Thanks!