dslr stabilizer

Three Camera Music Video shot on Canon EOS 60D • 34 Comments

Emm • September 27, 2010

It was a scorching hot day yesterday, but the bright sun helped bring in some light into this old unused factory. There was no electricity so the band rented a 5000 watt generator for the shoot. We had full run of the entire abandoned lot which was awesome. This place was huge with several buildings over 8 stories high and had so much texture of steel, brick, and concrete. Sitting right off the water, the place was just so large, we didn't get to see everything. The entire area is private, fenced off, with 24 hour security so we were able to just leave stuff everywhere. I'd love to get back there and shoot again if I could. Would be a perfect setting for a horror film, that's for sure.

We started indoors with some really slow camera movements on the DIY track. It could have used another saw horse down the center for some additional stability, but worked fine for just slow movements. Going faster, it wanted to flex. We also did a bit of Crane shooting and later threw in some really close up hand held beauty shots of the band.

We moved up to the roof in the late afternoon, and to really show off the height we were at, slung a Canon 60D on a crane over the side of the building. A bit scary, but it should be a really cool looking swing from over the side of the building back onto the roof. Hopefully that went pretty smooth, but from what we can see on the LCD it came out great.

Next we went down to the outside grounds for a walking Steadicam Shot. The band followed the camera slowly while singing to the music. With the Canon 60D articulating LCD, I was able to walk forward and let the band frame themselves by looking into the LCD. They were able to monitor themselves and stay in frame, while I concentrated on not falling over or tripping on anything.

I'll get the video footage once the editor hands them back, and show some of the shots we did. The Steadicam looked really great with the Canon 10-22mm Lens I rented and had all this space to run around in. Flying through a wide open room with large glass windows and concrete pillars everywhere had a very cool flying effect. I have to admit that with the changes in light, using the white balance on the 60D was much more effective than trying to set it on the T2i (which was being used for some BTS video). The 3 Canon 60D's worked really well and meshes closer to the workings of the 7D than a T2i. Definitely a great camera to work with. Now that i'm done with this project, I may sell one of them, but tempted to keep them both!

[Thanks to Matt for grabbing these BTS photos while we were running around in the heat]

Canon 60D Video Stabilizer – First Flight Glidecam HD4000 • 38 Comments

Emm • September 25, 2010

Wait! Just gotta say sorry about the mess, I just bought the place and still moving crap in. Boxes everywhere, don't know where to put anything yet. Hey you're lucky i'm even sharing this test video, it's almost Midnight! Yeah and it might be a bit dark too, I wasn't going for quality here, just trying to get this darn thing balanced. So I have an early music video shoot tomorrow in which I thought I would do ALL Canon 60D's so I can break her in and get faster at the menu and settings. There will be three Canon 60D's on set. I didn't have the Glidecam HD1000 Stabilizer here, so I had to balance the Glidecam HD4000 Stabilizer. (always balance your rig the night before, saves time).

60d-flying-4

The 60D doesn't have the Canon Battery Grip BG-E9 just yet, and i'm shooting with the the Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM SLR Lens. BTW, I'm loving that lens. Not much fisheye/barrel distortion as I thought it would have. The entire unit is just way too light for a beast like the Glidecam HD4000 Stabilizer. So in order to correct this, I placed weights above the camera on the hot shoe.

60d-flying-1

Yes, you can add weights under the camera, but the hot shoe was a simple way to add or remove weights, keep things almost centered with the camera weight, and also easy to shift it around for additional fine tuning balance. It's a pretty cool setup actually which would work great with some stabilizers that lack fine tuning adjustments. You can add a simple flat bar to the hot shoe and shift it around to center that camera weight. So i'm very close to having it balanced, the rest can be done by moving the lower sled up or down to make it either bottom heavy or top heavy. Check out the video above, and the photos of how I added the weights to the camera with a threaded hot shoe mount. You can find those mounts in this article: http://cheesycam.com/mounting-zoom-h1-on-camera/ or find some below.

shoe-adapters-20
variety of shoe mounts

60d-flying-2

glidecam-hd-4000
Glidecam HD4000 Stabilizer

Flexible Friction Power Arms for DSLR accessories • 23 Comments

Emm • September 22, 2010

[Show as slideshow]

Yeah, they rock! Was a bit worried about the size, type of material, and how much weight these things would carry, but I totally under estimated the quality. It's all metal in every segment. Lots of different mounting options from Male thread, to Female Threaded insert, to Hot shoe. Very cool highly positionable little arms that carry a crap load of weight. In the video above i'm showing these things carrying my other DSLR's while mounted to a Letus Talon DSLR Camera Cage. If you're looking to bring that Z96 LED video light a bit higher, move your Shotgun Microphone further away from the camera, add an HDMI LCD Monitor, or position your Portable Audio recorder into view so you can control it faster, these are the things that will help get your rig customized. If used with the Nano clamps, they become more versatile to mount onto Lightstands, onto the Rods of your rig, or clip onto the legs of your Tripod. In the past these types of arms ran well over $90 dollars for everything included, but here's a seller pawning them off for half that price: Link >> DSLR Variable Position Flexible Power Arm for Accessory Mounting

power-arm-led-video-light
Lightweight Variable Friction Power Arm For DSLR

manfrotto-mini-clamp
Manfrotto Nano Clamp

[Update] There was a comment in one of the earlier posts, that this item looks similar to the arms sold from Vibesta. Shortly after posting this article, I get an email from Mark of Vibesta. Here's a little bit more information from the man of Vibesta himself...

Hi all,
This is Mark from Vibesta and I can shed some light on this.
We are the manufacturer of these arms so if you find the identical arm somewhere it is from us (or a copy of it). It is right that we produce it in china to be able to offer it at the lowest price possible and we take great care of quality control to offer arms that are of the same or better quality compared to the best arms on the market.

We sell the arms to manufacturers, retailers and final customers so it is possible to get it through different sources but we try to offer Vibesta arms locally in as many countries as possible so that customers don’t have to pay high shipping costs or wait a longer time for their order – for example within the USA you can order Vibesta arms from Express35.com or Cory Easom, for europe we have local stock in Germany and we are constantly adding retailers within other countries to our network. We will very soon update our website so that it gives you more information where you can order our products locally.

As prices don’t differ a lot I would encourage you to order from a local source if possible to support your local dealers and also for better and more direct customer service.

Best regards,
Mark

Well i'm not sure how to follow up on this one. Obviously, If you're looking for these types of products in the US, check out the suggested retailers. If you're in Germany, Vibesta has the products locally. As far as the overseas sales, i'm guessing it's not going to be around very long....

Hague DSLR Motion-Cam Sample and Review • 4 Comments

Emm • September 9, 2010

Eelke D. over on Vimeo gives us a bit of insight on the Hague DSLR Motion Cam - Camera Stabilizer. I can't remember who exactly asked me about this stabilizer, but sounds like they needed a bit more information. The handle uses the same limited range ball tie rod end (maybe a bit larger) as the smaller Hague Mini Motion Cam Stabilizer which is designed similar to the Tiffen Steadicam Merlin. The Hague DSLR Motion Cam Stabilizer retail price also sells for more than a Flycam Nano as demonstrated by kaydawgy in this article: http://cheesycam.com/flycam-nano-excellent-demo-video/.

Especially because of what it's priced at and the available competition, I've got my own personal opinions about this particular Hague stabilizer. This is why it's never been featured on this blog. Since someone else has taken their time out to share a review, and some people have been looking for information about it, here it is. Thanks Eelke D.! I'm going to sit back and leave you with the video, but i'll be interested in seeing some comments at the video jump here: https://vimeo.com/14803818

Shape ‘ing new DSLR Camera Stabilizers • 4 Comments

Emm • September 8, 2010

A couple of new DSLR rigs and accessories just appeared almost instantaneously. There's plenty of new videos just recently uploaded to Vimeo and auction listings on eBay are also new. I remember watching this company for quite some time now, but this new lineup of DSLR stabilizer and accessories just popped out of nowhere. Instead of looking quite bare with simple rods and clamps, this is based around some weird hybrid design of flat plates, brackets, pads, and still have areas to adapt standard rods to mount other accessories from other brands. No doubt, it definitely looks cool. All is not totally clear right now, but i'm hoping i'll get a chance to see these rigs in person to get a better 'look over'.

Since things are quite new with these rigs, there's plenty of listings with the option for 'Best Offer'. Word of mouth, getting the products into the hands of DSLR shooters, and just plain visibility is key to grow any new product, so who knows if you can drop a 'Best Offer' and grab one for a steal. I'm sure they'll be excited to get these things out on the street. Here's the product links to the Shape DSLR Camera Stabilizers and Accessories.

Shape DSLR Camera Supports

CheesyCam

Video and Photography