Anyone speaks French?? DIY, SteadyCam

[Koper]

Check out this video

- pretty nice video footage with steady cam

 

and then he shows how he made it in french.

 

 

Now, its still pretty clear what he does but at 7mins it becomes a little bit more difficult.

 

The rig is pretty sweet

 

so anyone care to translate a bit?

[AJLynn]

That's pretty cool. I'd rather be using one of those than one of the rigs that require both hands and a shoulder.

 

It looks like the key element is the universal joint, which he's made more universal by adding ball bearing top and bottom that allow rotation on the vertical axis. The handle is under the joint (the joint is carrying a compression force) and the thing is balanced because the center of gravity is below the joint. (The lower you make it, the less sway on the back-to-front axis.) The orange object on the lower flange looks like a weight for front-to-back balance - hard to tell but I assume it's on a threaded rod.

 

I think the difficulty must be that in order for the thing to provide stabilization it must have weight and it needs to be held away from the body, so it's going to tire your arm. The old Steadycams for Betacam camcorders rest on the shoulders (but they're heavier than this because the camera is heavier).

[Koper]

You beauty!!! its called a Universal joint!!! I spent some time today in a common dutch hardware store, but they don't even sell ball bearings. But i will keep looking for the parts as I want to make this rig. I think the most difficult part would be (other than finding the parts) to align the centre of mass of the camera to the correct location on the plate, hence all the holes he put in on that plate.

[AJLynn]

The difficulty there is that the tripod hole is aligned to the optical, not mass, center of the camera. If you find the center of mass then make a hole in the mounting plate to place the center of mass where you want it, the camera's optical axis will no longer be centered on the mount plate. When you change lenses, the balance will shift. What you probably want to do is make a slot instead of a hole so you're free to adjust, then make reference marks to help you align the camera for each lens.

 

I hope none of the French translates to "this is really easy"