Hi all,

I shoot a lot of fast-paced sports events with my XA10 and I'm looking for something to help make my shots smoother that is easy to carry around. A shoulder stabiliser maybe?

Does anyone use anything like this? Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance

Good question. I shoot cycling and sometimes have my DSLR for photos hanging to my side. I pretty much lug a tripod around now for the XA10. There are carbon ones that are very light, functional for little/no panning but not all that stable so make sure nobody's foot is nearby. When I'm setup on concrete I'll bring my video tripod which allows smoother panning and has my lanc controller for smooth zooming.

If no stand is possible then I'd recommend something similar to a glidecam because it's more like holding it and seems more natural to use and may be lighter than a shoulder rig with counter-weight.

One thing I do if I'm handholding or walking is use the stabilization which is very good. Can be jittery but it's better than doing a lot of stabilizing in post which takes forever. GL

Thanks for the tips.

I do have a Steadicam Merlin but I don't really find it useful for shooting things like sports events.

I'm thinking something more along the lines of one of those shoulder rigs that DSLR shooters commonly use... But I've never used one so I'm not too sure how effective they are with a video camera.

It's low tech, but it can work quite well. It's also inexpensive, it's called the Spiderbrace.

I dug mine out of the closet the other day for a job and it was a lifesaver. I hadn't used it for two years, I'm taking it with me from now on.

My particular model is not made any longer, but I love it.


DEMO (http://spiderbrace.com/demo.html)

Difficult to hold a small, under 2 lb. camcorder steady. On the cheap, make the camcorder heavy (like 15 lbs or so) , and put it on your shoulder. That slows and tends to smooth out camcorder movements. You may need to home-brew a bit of a rig to do this.

I second what Jeff Harper suggests. I have owned a spider brace for about 4 years we have used extensively with our Sony V1U's.

The XA10 fits and works well on that spider brace but they had a sale about a month ago and I bought the smaller one (but still has two handles) designed for DSLR's and smaller camcorders. We have not used it yet in our Wedding Videography business but I have mounted the XA10 and it works well.

The Spider Brace is made out of pvc pipe so is extremely lightweight but also somewhat fragile so you have to be careful with it. However, as I said, we have used ours for four years and I have to say it has never let us down.

We used to use a glidecam 4000HD with a flycam arm and vest but my shooter has been able to achieve great results with just the spider brace (those swoopy around the couple shots during the first dance, etc).

The Spider Brace is also light enough that you can use the two handles to lift the camera above your head fro great shots in certain situations.

Which of the current SpiderBrace models do you recommend for the XA10?

We have been using the Spiderbrace 2 that we used with our Sony V1U with the XA10 but I just bought a Spiderbrace DSLR to use with our new Canon T4i and the XA10 also works on it although I have just mounted it to see and have not actually used it. I think the narrowness of the DSLR rig might constrict the movement a little so we will probably stick with the Spiderbrace 2.

Thanks! I was wondering about the differences between those two.

Stephen, I have an older model, so I can't recommend a model from the current line up.