Steadicam v's Glidecam for Canon XLH1

[Simon Duncan]

Thanks again to everyone.

Charles I can't find any of the references you have mentioned.

Could you supply a link to the places where your review of the smooth shooter and the flyer 20 min demo video is?
Also could you supply the same link for:
"Read the reviews I did on the flyer or the Glidecam V25 and see the differences and your needs in the near future."

Just a closing note. The smooth shooter and glidecam pro 400 will set me back some $2000.00 US whereas from what I can see the Steadicam Flyer would cost something the area of $7500.00 US. This is almost 4 times more expensive.

[Charles Papert]

Originally Posted by Simon Duncan

Just a closing note. The smooth shooter and glidecam pro 400 will set me back some $2000.00 US whereas from what I can see the Steadicam Flyer would cost something the area of $7500.00 US. This is almost 4 times more expensive.

Simon, a lot of this has to do with how fastidious you are about framing and movement. In the case of the roundy-round at the table you describe, indeed that is best tackled with a dolly; but if it is to be shot with a stabilizer, how close to the look of a dolly will you be expecting to achieve? As the foreground heads move past the camera, the performance of whichever arm you are using is brought under the microscope as a pogo-ing up and down will make the foreground head appear to bob in the frame. Plus if you intend to make pans to people who are talking, at some point that will likely require a hard right pan to the profile of the person at the far right side of the table and realize that with the GC, you will lose sight of your flip-out monitor (whereas the central monitor of the Flyer will stay visible). Finally, the limited amount of boom with the Smooth Shooter compared to the Flyer arm may limit your ability to place the lens at exactly the height you want for this move.

One other note is that trimming the rig fore-and-aft and side-to-side is a much more streamlined process with the Flyer. I used a GC/Smooth Shooter recently and found their setup rudimentary to say the least. I would guess that many users of that setup are not flying with a finely tuned rig for this reason, which will impact their photography.

The bottom line is that if you are really interested in getting really accurate results, if you are the kind of shooter that studies your work and critically analyzes what you can do to make it better next time and compares it to the kind of stuff you see in movies or on TV, chances are you will be much more pleased down the road with the Flyer. Of course you could always sell the GC setup and recoup perhaps as much as 70% of the cost as there is a good market for used gear out there.

I'm not saying that the GC is incapable of decent looking shots; I think it delivers a lot for the money. I just believe that the performance of the Flyer arm is worth every penny.

[Charles King]

Well said Charles P. :)

Simon, here is the link to the reviews I was talking about: http://hbsboard.com/index.php/board,35.0.html

There are several with comparison charts.

[Pieter Mali]

Originally Posted by Charles Papert

A lot of people base their stabilizer decision on what seems like economic sense, i.e. if the camera costs $6K (or even $10K in this case), why on earth would you pay $7K for a stabilizer? The important thing to remember is that cameras in this class will always be this size or smaller, and thus the rig will outlast any particular camera. In 10 years, the performance of the XLH1 will have been well surpassed (probably by a cell phone!) but the Flyer will still be able to turn out perfectly smooth shots.

So the same is true of buying tripods; buy the best support gear you can possibly afford, because you will be using it for a long, long time.

I fullee agree with what you are saying, Charles. Few months ago I wanted to buy a new camera, was thinking of a Sony HDR fx1, but after studying this forum (and others) I decided to keep my 8 yrs old panasonic nv-dx100 and bought a Merlin and a Sachtler DV II 2. I am very happy I did this: these tool improve the footage, while a new camera would have only improved the image. It also saves me a new computer ...

Pieter