I've made the steadicam from materials available at our local hardware store. Here are some pictures:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v215/jomark8/5c43b199.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v215/jomark8/6f6d9c59.jpg

Nice design, Julius! Does that gimbal assembly have three axes of movement? Where did you find it?

I like it.

.. hows that for simple and effective?

Did you make trhe frame or did you get it as one peice.

- Mikko

Nice design, Julius! Does that gimbal assembly have three axes of movement? Where did you find it?

Yes it does. It's just a universal joint. I have it done in a manner that it will rotate on its axis.

I like it.

.. hows that for simple and effective?

Did you make trhe frame or did you get it as one peice.

- Mikko


It is really simple and quite effective since the top and the bottom weight can easily be adjusted to fit your balancing need.

Actually the frame is just an "overhead storage hook". Here is the picture: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v215/jomark8/8443445e.jpg
I just sawed off the opposite end.

Nice!
Do you have clearer pictures- I'm especially interested to see how you put that gimbal (universal joint) together. (Where do you pick up a universal joint?)

Nice!
Do you have clearer pictures- I'm especially interested to see how you put that gimbal (universal joint) together. (Where do you pick up a universal joint?)

I'll try to provide detailed pictures later.

The universal joint is a 1/2" KYK brand which is available at any hardware stores. Other brand includes Stanley but KYK is lot cheaper.

Is it the same joint that is used by in the FlowPod by Varizoom ?

Julius,

I took a stab at building a handheld stabilizer patterned after the one reflected in your posted photos. I found the overhead hanger at my local Ace Hardware. I obtained 5/16 throttle joint from NAPA auto parts, and dismantled an inexpensive, Wal-Mart tripod for the remainder of parts needed. Whereas your stabilizing weight is directly under the camcorder towards the rear, mine is front-loaded (on the lower arm segment that you cut off). I then cut off the opposite lower arm which you used to hold your balance weight.

My costs to build the homemade stabilizer was about the same as yours. My finished product eliminates typical handheld jerkiness and gives a pleasant appearance of floating on air (when walking, running, panning abruptly). The only difference I've noticed between my homemade stabilizer and several commercial units is that my unit produces slightly more "sway". The "sway" that I speak of occurs only when pan, tilt and stopping occurs abruptly, which is not the typical way one would shoot video --- except for test purposes.

Sorry, no pic available, as I don't have a place to post one.

HDG

That sway is the Pendulum effect. Sounds like you have too much weight on the bottom. Either that, or just learn to operate with it. If you want to see the pendulum effect in motion like you've never seen before, just try to operate my rig! 15 pounds of monitor, battery, and steel connecting rods on the bottom, and 2 pounds of Canon ZR on the top. That thing is so bottom heavy, my gimbal is sometimes placed about 60% down the post, just to get it more agile, rather than being so inert.

Fun fun fun. If only my arm (the Steadicam one) hadn't broken this morning.

You're depriving Steadicam of more than $350 in profit for each unit they will no longer sell. I've always been outraged by the prices the companies in our industry are able to get away with.

Bravo.

Paul:

With all due respect, you must spend much of your life being outraged, then. Consider the price of a drink at a bar compared to how much it would cost to make at home--given the same percentage of markeup, that Steadicam JR would probably cost a couple of thousand dollars. When one really breaks down that so-called profit margin, a more realistic picture appears--one that takes into account overhead such as employees, R&D, advertising, operating expenses, patent attorneys and a myriad of other costs.

That might make you think that I am a "company" man; but no, I encourage homebuilding, no problems there. The only thing I object to is folks who spend hours and hours tinkering and question why it would possibly cost twice as much to buy the commercial version without placing any monetary value on their time.

OK--I'm off that horse.

Tom, sounds like you need to jettison some weight off the bottom of your rig! Have you considered carbon fibre posts instead of the steel ones? Not to hard to find these days. And I'm hoping your center post is aluminum, not steel...?

Hawood:

Tom is right about the pendulum effect being a function of operating. As a young man I was stuffed into a back seat of a car and handed a punchbowl full of keg beer to transport to an event. I quickly learned that fast stops and starts would get awfully sticky unless I compensated by tilting the punchbowl the other way to counteract the effect. Same thing with a stabilizer; you absolutely can make abrupt stops (and actually it does come up in regular shooting quite a bit), but you have to learn how to reign in the inertial forces that occur as a result.

The other thing that helped with the punchbowl was to put my head down and drain the contents, but that isn't translatable to Steadicam...!

good luck with it,


Charles

"put my head down and drain the contents" ...LOL!

- Mikko

true story, Mikko--and this was probably within a year of taking the workshop so even through the haze I was thinking about the parallel with Steadicam--what a geek!

Unluckily Charles, your hopes are unanswered, my post is Steel. Luckily it's decently thin, and only weighs about 2 pounds. I'm actually loving how much weight is on my sled. (I never once in my life thought I'd say that). It's just so darned inert.

I think this might be a testiment to how much I oped with handheld rigs, but I can operate my full sled handheld for about 10 minutes, before I feel like my arm is going limp. Then again, I'm a little bigger than the typical Steadicam operator, being 6'2, 240 pounds, and being able to dead lift 450, so I think I've got some advantages there. ;-) (Why does this board have no smileys?)

Yeah, looks like I may end up going to Home Depot tomorrow to, once again, try and buy more parts, just to try and fix the arm.

Oh, and the next version of my sled (next summer), will probably be either Al or CF, and will have Cody Deegan's backmount vest, a nice new 7" LCD, AB batteries, and a completely new 3A style arm (that's the only piece I might skimp on, just making it more of a Flyer arm instead).

Hi Tom,

Yes indeed, heavy does equal inert, and when it comes down to it a 15lb sled is still a "lightweight" relatively speaking. The thing to keep in mind is that the further from the center of gravity of the rig (the gimbal, for all intents and purposes) the weight lives, the more effect it will have on the inertia. That's why it's good to have a light center post and focus on the weight being applied at the outer edges, i.e. monitor, battery and camera. If you were able to relocate the masses so that you could beef up the camera by mounting it on a steel weight plate (bringing it up to, say 6 lbs), lightening up the other components in between and then having your battery at the back and monitor at the front (probably adding a bit of weight to the LCD) still all add up to the same 15 lbs, you would see a significant improvement in the way the rig flies. Ideally your gimbal should be at most 20% of the way down the center post, certainly not 60%. The other great thing about having this setup is that when you do need to move to a larger camera, you can do so without your rig getting any heavier by removing the steel weight plate. But since you have a plan to rebuild with different materials, this may all be things you know...!

Regarding the arm...the Flyer arm is a much more sophisticated piece of gear than the 3a arm in that it is substantially more linear throughout its boom range (which is also greater than the 3a)! If you are going to reverse-engineer, might as well go after the latest design! The Flyer was the first of a series of new arms (the G50 being the latest) that Tiffen is rolling out to replace the Ultra/Master style arms that replaced the 3A nearly ten years ago.

Best of luck with it!

Thanks for the advice Charles. I'll definetly take that into consideration on the next incarnation of my rig.