Pete,
I have been doing the same thing with a small canon eos-m camera and a small staedicam on the end of a handheld long pole. I am working now on using a small gimbal setup with brushless dc motors and a controller board from ideas I have form all the RC multicopters hobby stuff.
I think that R/C style gimbal with brushless motors is going to be the way forward. If you combine a handheld stabiliser like a Merlin or Glidecam with a simple 2 axis gimbal you could have a very cheap system compared to a $15K all-singing all-dancing 3 axis gizmos like the Freefly Store - Freefly M?VI (http://store.freeflysystems.com/collections/movi)

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/stabilizers-steadicam-etc/518885-2-axis-brushless-gimbal-steadicam.html

I've been testing on a jib pole stabilizer

That footage looks great Pete, do you have a photo from that jib pole stabilizer?

I know I can use a gimbal extender and I even have a shorter vertical tube but I don't like the super light set up as it makes smooth moves more difficult to achieve, it all becomes very sensitive to touch, that's why I like to add a bit of weight which helps from my experience to achieve smoother movements.

Below a picture of my set up I used yesterday at a wedding which worked very well, I added my g6 (that had a olympus 12mm f2.0 on it) to my mini shouldermount, it is attached to a quick release plate so I can easily take it of the steadicam if necessary. It looks a bit odd because it extends to the back so much but I can show you a real run and gun shot I did with it, see explanation and video below.

Just to explain what happened; I asked the manager when they where going to bring in the cake and he said: "soon, they are preparing it now", I thought I at least had a few minutes but when he left I saw in the corner of my eyes something sparkling, when I looked I saw a line of waiters holding a small cake each with a sparkling stick (or whatever it's called) that was being lit on one by one and when the stick started to sparkle the waiter started moving.

I had to run from halfway the large venue to get my blackbird which was in standby on it's resting stand, I switched the camera on, I pointed it towards a wall which was about 4 meters from me and pushed the shutterbutton to let the lens autofocus and lock to that distance, I adjusted my f-stop as the lightconditions changed since I last used the camera and I needed to set it to f2.0 and iso 800 ( I knew my sharpness would be limited to the first few meters in that way as I focused to a shorter distance so needed to stay closer to the waiters) and pressed record and started running to catch up with the waiters, in my haste I noticed I had my resting stand still open when I started to fly as the blackbird tilted down, you can hear it click into place att the beginning. Below you can see what happened as soon as I pressed record, I was in such a hurry you see the up and down walking motion in the beginning but once I got into the zone I did let it fly :D The waiter I let pass at the beginning was the last one in line, I waited a bit for her to have a starting point for my shot.

I spontaneously did the moonwalk after I nailed that shot. These type of shots are the reason why I have the blackbird and why I like it so much, especially in combination with the g6 now and the great oly 12mm lens. A bit of luck was involved as well as the timing for placing the sparkling candles on the tables and the position where they where placed was absolutely perfect.

As you can see there where some really challenging light situations. I had to set the whitebalance to auto as there was a mixture of daylight and tungsten colour lights and there was no way to have a "right" preset without the image looking odd depending from where I shot, at the start the image was overexposed due the overwhelming flood of pink high power spots that was positioned against the wall but I knew I had to set it like that as it was much darker in the rest of the venue.

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with a sparkling stick (or whatever it's called")From your description I thought they were going to be what we call sparklers (metal wire with firework material stuck to it) but looking at the video they are in fact Roman candles (paper or cardboard tube full of firework material).

Well done with the video. Those dreadful pink lights seem to be at almost every wedding venue nowadays. I really would like to try a Blackbird.

Nicely done, Noa. Especially on such short notice!

Bill

they are in fact Roman candles (paper or cardboard tube full of firework material).

It's good to finally know the correct English term :) They are used at almost every wedding here.

Those dreadful pink lights seem to be at almost every wedding venue nowadays.

Especially this year I have seen these dreadfull lights (led) appear at a lot of weddings, it looks special seen through your own eyes but having only bright pink, blue or most worst red is killing it for video, I never know how to set my whitebalance, every preset I try looks even more funky, at the last wedding I even had to use 1/40th shutter to get rid of some grey stripes that would run from top to bottom on my screen. On my g6 screen it was also very hard to set the right exposure. For the first dance I asked the light technician to add some white light and that made all the difference.

I really would like to try a Blackbird.
Here's another more controlled one I did when the venue was empty, the people from camera motion research have been very friendly and offer excellent support, for me it doesn't feel like they are located on the other side of the planet because they don't treat me like a number, a feeling I do have with some Belgian companies. :)
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Nicely done, Noa. Especially on such short notice!

I have seen some people questioning why they should get a steadicam because they think it will slow them down and it's yet another thing to drag around, I only use it starting from the venue at the reception, before that it is too difficult to use as I have to move to different locations in a short time and it's not practical as a soloshooter to use when you are covering a ceremony, but at the venue it's always on standby and now with the g6 and that small Olympus lens a great combo. These steadicam shots are used a lot in my demo's on my site and that's what is attracting my clients attention, the g6 also allows smooth slowmotion from 50p which is a feature also mainly used for my demo's, slomo just looks more awesome. :)