My Shoulder Rig for Video & Still Cams

[J. Stephen McDonald]

Here's the latest version of my shoulder-mount/stabilizer that I'm using for my Sony H5 digital camera. It's mostly the same as several others I've made for my camcorders, such as the Sony VX2100 and Sony EDP-10F/EDW10F docked camcorder. I use a fiberglass baseplate and aluminum tubes and have a 1 Kg. counterweight at the bottom of this one, that is shown in the first picture. I have a Raynox DCR-2020PRO, 2.2X telextender on the Sony H5 camera in this photo. The second picture is a shot I took with this setup.

With this mount, I can zoom in to the full combination magnification of 26.4X and have no trouble holding steady. When shooting video of moving subjects, I swing the handle on the left side forward and hold the rig away from my body. The H5 digital camera has a pretty good video mode and I can shoot a Fine mode 640 X 480 video as long as 50 minutes, with a 4 Gb Pro Duo MemoryStick. For non-moving stills and video, I press the foam pad against my right side. I have other versions with more counterweights and one has an adjustable monopod leg. I started working on the first version 17 years ago. I began by adding attachments to a monopod and it gradually became what you see here.