Have a heli shoot upcoming in St Louis. Looking to rent some kind of stabilizing rig. My Blackbird obviously won't cut it given the wind etc. Need to support my 5dm2.

Any recommendations as to best equipment for the job and where to rent?

Thanks

Back in the day we used Tyler mounts for broadcast cameras. We used to take off the side door, and shoot out the side. However, this may be overkill for a 5D. You can also look up Kenyon gyro stabilizers. Helicopters have a lot of higher frequency vibration, which would result in obvious rolling shutter jello effect if you use CMOS. In my opinion, the 5D is not the right tool for shooting aerials. I would prefer a CCD video camera. It would be a disaster to hire the heli for an hour of aerials, only to find out later in post (on a big screen) that the footage looks like wiggling jelly.

Vincent Laforet did plenty of successful aerial work with the 5D--just look at the film that started it all, "Reverie". He uses a dual gyro handheld rig with that setup. I'm sure there is a pic somewhere on his site.

It's called the ATM stabilizer.

You can rent one here.
Helicopter Gyro Stabilizer (http://www.trainorders.com/aerialvideo/)