Build Your Own Steadicam 293
John Jorsett writes "Always wanted to film one of those cool 'walking' sequences, where the camera stays rock-steady as you trudge along? Well, so did Johnny Chung Lee, except he didn't want to lay out major cash for a professional Steadicam rig, so he built his own for $14. He further claims you can do it in about 20 minutes if you know what you're doing. What more could a cheap, impatient Spielberg wannabe ask for?"
I don't know... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I don't know... (Score:4, Funny)
In response to "What more could a cheap ..." (Score:2, Funny)
How about a better room to film in than the bathroom? Seriously, are we going to be expected to line up around the block for "SteadyShit"
Re:In response to "What more could a cheap ..." (Score:3, Insightful)
That nonwithstanding, this is still a pretty cool idea. I may ask my shop guy to give it a try since it would be really cool to have that for my XL1 - and he's right, these things really are pretty pricey.
D
Does what it says it does (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Does what it says it does (Score:5, Informative)
the best solution I have ever seen was a monopod modified to have a plastic coated weight at the bottom, it collapses into something that can be carried and is much easier to control plus costs less and weighs less.
although it is still NOTHING like a real steadicam.. wearing that vest with the spring arm and rest of the gear coupled with a REAL 5 inch LCD monitor mounted on the weight plate... a trained operater can almost run at full speed without motion in the camera... the home brew units can not do anytihng like that.
Plus I find the vest unit to be more comfortable and can shoot for much longer... having your body support the weight compared to the home built that requires your arms to support everything is significant!
Re:Does what it says it does (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does what it says it does (Score:5, Funny)
Oh I'll make them suffer alright....
Re:Does what it says it does (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Does what it says it does (Score:5, Informative)
Welcome to slashdot! (Score:3, Funny)
You must be new here...
Re:Does what it says it does (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, what I'm really looking forward to is the $18.50 jib.
Re:Does what it says it does (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember the movie with the amazing closeups of migratory birds in flight? That was all image stabilization.
Image stabilization done in postprocessing should really be able to do an amazing job, since it can even (in effect) anticipate the future, which no mechanical system could do. But the loss of resolution from digital zooming (or alternately, a dynamically resizing black border) may be a deal killer.
Re:Does what it says it does (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does what it says it does (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does what it says it does (Score:3, Insightful)
Tourist... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Tourist... (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason most people don't watch what they filmed is because they lack this piece of software: muvee autoProducer [muvee.com]
Pretty cool stuff (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Pretty cool stuff (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pretty cool stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, It's all about Center-of-gravity. The key is to move the CG as low as possible to make a stable pendalum, with as much mass as possible to increase inertia and reduce jitters. These
Re:Pretty cool stuff (Score:3, Informative)
If you REALLY want to impress people, try building your own camera crane [creativemac.com], bonus geek points for computer motion control.
Re:Pretty cool stuff (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pretty cool stuff (Score:2)
A.) It's patenteted.
B.) Sony wouldn't sell it for $14, they'd sell it for like $10 than an actual one costs.
Re:Pretty cool stuff (Score:2)
Wheels? Are you sure you're looking at the same website?
Re:Pretty cool stuff (Score:4, Informative)
Simple: It's not a tripod, and it has no wheels.
At best, you could call it a monopod, but even then, it's meant to be carried, it doesn't rest on the ground. So I guess it's a nonopod.
What it really is is a stick with a weight attached. The weight steadies the camera from sudden jerks, simply due to it's own inertia. It still relies on the camera guy to have a fairly steady hand, this just "takes the edge off" of the shakiness, so to speak.
the story's better at memepool. (Score:3, Informative)
memepool [memepool.com]
Re:the story's better at memepool. (Score:5, Informative)
stedicam+phone (Score:5, Funny)
Re:stedicam+phone (Score:5, Funny)
Re:stedicam+phone (Score:5, Funny)
Given the context, I really hope that that is just your signature.
What I'd like to know... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What I'd like to know... (Score:3, Informative)
Some of my friends cling to the notion that the two greatest things in this world are duct tape and Gold Bond.
Blake
Re:What I'd like to know... (Score:5, Funny)
Some of my friends cling to the notion that the two greatest things in this world are duct tape and Gold Bond.
This of course is sheer nonsense. Any connoisseur would know that the two greatest things in the world are duct tape and WD-40.
But sadly there are still some things [csittl.com] that they cannot do.
Hey a DUAL Purpose steadicam (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hey a DUAL Purpose steadicam (Score:3, Funny)
i'm pretty sure that has nothing to do with cameras
Ouch... (Score:3, Interesting)
As I was reading his setup I was really expecting his footage to look like crap, but after watching the sample they really are incredibly smooth given that it was only $14 to make. Props.
Lego steadicam (Score:5, Interesting)
xox,
Dead Nancy
Re:Lego steadicam (Score:3, Informative)
Good film btw.
Aliens (Score:3, Interesting)
It real (and really cheap) (Score:5, Informative)
Spielberg wannabe? (Score:3, Funny)
obligatory Sam Raimi reference (Score:5, Interesting)
They just had 2 people carry a heavy board with the camera through the forest, and had a 'camera plus battering ram' for the crash-through bits.
A lot less elegant than this design, basically, the idea of "really heavy = not much vibation or wobble" worked for them.
No... (Score:2)
Re:obligatory Sam Raimi reference (Score:4, Interesting)
Damn! (Score:5, Funny)
Holy shit!
Re:Damn! (Score:3, Insightful)
Bandwidth shaping?
Re:Damn! (Score:2)
Re:Damn! (Score:2, Insightful)
Depends on the .edu (Score:5, Interesting)
Just receantly the department I now work at got slashdotted (the meteor impact simulator). It was on a Sunblade with deceant stats, and the load average shot to 98 within a couple minutes. We finally offloaded it to a brand new (as in got it a week ago) Sun blade doing nothing but hosting that simulator and it was STILL at about a 25 load average, though it stayed up and serving.
Here we were on a much improved network (dual gig backbone to 3x OC-3s as opposed to the 10mb to 1x DS-3 back in the newspaper days), servers an couple orders of magnitude more powerful, and one dedidacted to serving, and yet got hit much harder. The big difference was the content was dynamic. The network wasn't even strained (it was all text anyhow) but the server was being asked to do a ton.
In this case it looks all static, so I'm guessing it's probably either the connection, or general load on the system. After all, this isn't his server, it's a departmental server, and probably one with a lot of users.
Thats amazing (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing you can't do (Score:5, Interesting)
All he's doing is adding a weight to make it hard for you to move your hands. And you can tell he's having a rough time with it as many of the shots are crooked. It's not properly weighted on the other side so he has to push down with one hand, up with the other and maintain a horizontal position throughout the shot. And he can't do it so the image is tilted most of the time. He'd have a chance of keeping the horizontal straight if he made a "T" instead of an "L"
This is why real steady cams are mounted on the chest like a snare drum. The springs/hydrolics take care of the vertical bounce and the mounting position balances the horizontal. The operator would have to bend over to one side to tilt the shot. If you want to get an "up" shot you bend over, point the camera up and walk backwards.
This is also why most movies move the camera around a lot. Besides it adding to the scene. It's actually easier to keep a steady path of movement than to hold a camera still.
Ben
No (Score:4, Interesting)
Keeping a camera still is trivial if you use a tripod. A steady path of movement gets expensive (in crew and equipment) quickly. The steadier you want it the more it costs. Even getting a non-jerky pan multiplies the cost of a tripod time ten.
The reason that movies move the camera a lot is because that is usually what tells the story best.
That same background (Score:5, Interesting)
In my old school marching band was just walking up and down the street. In my new school it was walking up and down the street I think once or twice but the rest of the time it was doing half time shows and competitions with formations and whatnot which was really cool. I had to learn how to basically run and play at the same time while keeping the instrument level.
Kind of like running with a video camera and not bouncing it around.
A lot of people don't get the practical applications of things like that because they're too concerned with not being "geeky" and just plain short sighted.
And this is why schools tend to cut music programs while the athletic department gets gobs of money.
Ben
Slashdotted? Here is a PDF copy of the site! (Score:4, Informative)
The $14 Steadycam [yorbamicro.com]
Re:Slashdotted? Here is a PDF copy of the site! (Score:2, Funny)
Look into something more sophisticated... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've built one of these too, and all things being equal, I think you would be better off spending $120 to get one of the Steady cam clones. True, he has some cool shots on his page but those are not nearly as easy as he makes it out to be. Maybe I am just clumsy.
When I walk forward my system wants to behave like a pendulum causing the camera to rock forward and back around the horizonal fulcrum. If things aren't perfectly balanced it is very difficult to keep the cameras tilt at a given attitude. Your left hand (if you were the author in the photo on the page) will not be able to keep the attitude without pendulum style oscillation. It's also difficult to make the camera turn around the camera of the horiontal bar and the fact that the rotational inertia of the person-pipe-camera system is not appropriate for turning around the camera.
Beyond those basic problems: it's also hard to hold on to and I tend to smack into door frames and innocent bystanders with the horizonal pipe.
One of the key parts to a steady cam rig is a gimbal joint that isolates tilt/tip motions of your hand from the "mass" that has the camera. Without this isolation it's really hard to get good shots without Zen master balance or just being lucky.
If anyone out there wants to make a Steady-cam like rig, I suggest they copy something like the Flowpod [varizoom.com]. Note the gimbal connecting the handle to the body of the device.
Re:Look into something more sophisticated... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can kinda understand where you're coming from, but honestly, it kind of erks me. And I've started seeing quite a few of these in this article. This guy spent $14 and maybe thirty minutes to an hour learning how to get the thing to work well, and yet for some reason paying nine times as much and also taking some time to learn to use it seems like a better idea?
Maybe if you can afford it. I'm a poor college kid who has several expensive hobbies. What you are saying is, I would be better off taking my car to a car audio store and having them install my stereo system for me, at the cost of $300 or so. That or I can do it myself, take a few days longer, for $40, and maybe not look quite as good. In my case I thought it was pretty damned close, and even though it took me a lot longer, I got the satisfaction of doing it myself. Thats the key thing here, I think, that most people miss.
He improvised, saved some money, and made a pretty good gadget himself. Decent accomplishment even if it isn't as good as something that costs nine times more. And thats just the cheap one, right?
Now, as far as him trying to make money off of it, I might see where you could complain about that. I think I would in his case too, but I don't think that would bother me as much.
Not quite the same thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
Cripes, it's a T-shaped pipe arrangement with a weight. Steadicam it ain't.
Re:Not quite the same thing. (Score:2)
The fact that this little project made it to slashdot is kind of sad.
Re:Not quite the same thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not at all what he's doing. The key to the steadycam is that the center of gravity of the apparatus is inside the handle (which is why you need a weight on the end of a pole to counterbalance the camcorder). This means that as you yank the camcorder around by the handle, *only* the position of the camera changes, not the orientation. This removes the much of the "jerkiness" of handheld shots that otherwise screams "low-budget amateur video!" Even without a gimbal mount for the handle, this device can still reduce handheld video jerkiness by a significant amount. Of course a gimbal-mounted handle would be better and would allow easier smooth panning, but it would be hard to do for $14 with commonly-available parts and easy assembly.
Re:Not quite the same thing. (Score:2)
Re:Not quite the same thing. (Score:2)
You'd probably get better results (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean watch a football game. There are tons of shoulder mounted shots that are quite good. As with anything, the skill of the operator is a large factor, but you don't need a stedicam to get a deceant shot, just a solid unit on your shoulder. Probably better than this, since this unit is going to want to act like a pendulum when faced with motion.
let's play watch the page hit counter! (Score:3, Interesting)
Getting good results... (Score:5, Funny)
Getting good results is not so much about the equipment, but how you use it.
I tried that bit on my girlfriend but she didn't fall for it.
This is a DMCA violation. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:This is a DMCA violation. (Score:2)
Unlike copyrights, patents expire [uspto.gov].
There was an old magazine called Cinemagic (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:There was an old magazine called Cinemagic (Score:2, Informative)
Better Links (Score:5, Informative)
if you want some real inspiration check out the following websites:
http://homebuiltstabilizers.com/
The original site for all your home built video needs
http://pub173.ezboard.com/bhomebuiltstabilizers
Discussion forum full of lots of useful information
http://www.codydeegan.com/
Might take a bit more effort, but the results are incredible. Cody's plans are awesome, and I would gladly purchase them again.
Not a Steadicam (Score:5, Informative)
This is really more similiar to a lower end Glidecam [glidecam.com] stabilizer (even this is floating).
There are also some rather cheap [markertek.com] alternatives out there to make a camcorder smoother.
Granted this is significantly cheaper to make than these products, but from my experience anything that is handheld doesn't work as well as the bodyrigs. Personally, I'd rather just do it by hand alone.
You also might want to check out a relatively cheap [markertek.com] jib [glidecam.com] too.
I've always wondered... (Score:2)
Re:I've always wondered... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I've always wondered... (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe some consumer cameras do this for small, high frequency vibrations in software and using tiny little servos to move something in the lense/sensor assembly. I've never seen that in a professional type camera.
It's best to just get your footage right the first time. "Fixing it
Re:I've always wondered... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I've always wondered... (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, before you kids start saying "well, just turn down the shutter speed", you do run out of light pretty soon. Modern CCD cameras, though, can do amazing things with short shutter times, and in that case your idea of stabilization after-the-fact will work just fine.
If yo
Glidecam (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing that I found very interesting about the whole steadicam thing is that it's not so much XYZ movement that causes visible camera shake, but the rotational movements (heading, pitch, bearing). That's what the gimbal mechanism on a steadicam eliminates. My model is handheld and doesn't have a spring loaded arm or vest, so there's still a fair amount of XYZ movement... but the shots still look stable.
With the camera usually looking at objects several feet away, moving up or down a fraction of an inch doesn't change the field of view much. But tilting the camera forward or back even a tiny amount changes the field of view a great deal. This wasn't intuitive to me until I tried the thing out.
Without any real experience, I doubt this guy's rig (basically a big weighted handle) is going to make shots much steadier than a careful handheld shot. I'd surely give it a try though, if I wasn't already set.
Anyways, steadicams are pretty cool.
Cheers.
That is *not* a steadycam. (Score:5, Informative)
All this does is add more weight - which will help you hold your modern teeny-tiny camera steady, but's that's far cry from being able to hold the camera still while you jog up the Art Museum steps.
How strange (Score:3, Funny)
The truth? (Score:2, Insightful)
K - "You can type more for your subject" (Score:2)
Geek builds heavyweight tripod for camera. Learns that weight makes tripod stable (The vertical shaking is pretty much dampened by the weight, unquoth.) Well, duh (O'K)
O'K. Does it with hand drill. Yay.
O'K. Stops selling them. "I have stopped selling these until Summer of 2004 at the earliest."
Gets posted on slashdot. Server burns/bandwidth bill causes heartattack.
O'K.
News for Nerds? Eh? Would you like to buy one? now that I've described how to make it?
SB
Want to do more, cheaper? (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously.
I play baritone in a competitive drum & bugle corps, and the first thing I did when our winter rehearsals started was to purchase a pair of wrist weights (a G baritone bugle weighs about 7 pounds, and we are expected to hold them in front of our faces for up to two hours or more at a time, repeated throughout the day). I wear them whenever I practice, whenever I just hold the horn up, and anytime else where it's not blatantly inappropriate. After about a month, not only was the horn easier to hold up, but--surprise surprise--my hands were generally a hell of a lot steadier than before.
With steady hands, you don't need a steadying device for the camera--and the stronger arms are an added plus.
Easy (Score:2, Funny)
Walkie-talkies.
SteadyHand (Score:3, Informative)
Nowadays I would probably fix it in combustion, where I'd have more control over it.
Might be great for making porn (Score:3, Funny)
Am I the only one who think's he's the real-life version of John Lithgow's character in Footloose?
Lee
Just a reminder: (Score:2)
Impoverished College Kid perspective by:
Undefined Parameter
An even simpler solution (Score:3, Interesting)
All you need is a tripod (the heavier the better).
Collapse the legs so they are as short as possible.
Make a peace sign with your hand.
Use those two fingers, curled up (palm up) to hold the tripod under the camera base, so the whole thing is supported on the tips of your two fingers.
The weight of the tripod legs will put the center of mass under the support point (your fingers).
Your arm muscles, tendons and ligaments make natural dampeners.
I've use this several times with good results.
Well, that looks simple... (Score:3, Informative)
If you don't care the hours the building takes, then I'd suggest building something like this guy did: a full steadicam-like setup with a vest, two suspension arms, a fully working gimbal and all the stuff this $14 poor man's "steadicam" has [jamesarnett.com]. The costs? About $30, plus 20 hours of work. Sure, it looks ugly but you can't beat the price for the functionality. You'll need stabilizer arms for a stable picture while running or glimbing stairs.
(As a sidenote, "SteadiCam" is a trademarked term. Wikipedia has more information about steadicams in general [wikipedia.org].)
A few more homebuilt stabilizer links... (Score:3, Interesting)
Create Your Own Camera Boom [pacifier.com]
Shot Glass Gimbal (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Easy Question (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Easy Question (Score:2)
Note to Moderators (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Inventor of the original Steadicam (Score:5, Informative)
I saw a documentary about Garrett Brown, and it showed his various prototype stages. The original one looked exactly like this - a length of pipe. The second one was more like a pantograph to try to keep the camera level. Then he added the seperate handle connected to the upright portion wih a gimbal. The rest of the development was on the counter-balance arm and the vest. All of this was necessary because Brown was building these for 35mm film cameras.
If you're looking to improve this design, the things I'd look at are: a gimbal, so allow the operator to hold the unit more comfortably and lightly, and avoid transferring hand motion to the camera; a sliding mount at the top, to allow the camera's balance to be shifted forward and back to tilt up or down.
The Steadycam JR Lite [steadicam.com] is a great one to look at. It was designed by the great Frogdesign studio (the NeXT cube). The camera sits on top of a slide, and right on top of the gimbal and handle. The arm is divided into two parts at a 90 degree angle, connected to the slide at 45 degrees. And the whole thing folds up. It's a wonderfully slick design - and obscenely overpriced [bhphotovideo.com].
OT: Another side of Garrett Brown (Score:2)
Re:Inventor of the original Steadicam (Score:2)
"And the lack of my steadicam doesn't help either"
Joke's aside, these handheld movies makes me dizzy.
Re:ANOTHER CHINK COPIES AMERICAN INVENTION (Score:2, Interesting)
I used to work for the company that made the steadicam (Cinema Products). But that was a long-ass time ago.
Re:Toilet (Score:2)
I went to CMU, and I'm pretty sure that's Hammerschlag.
Re:I thought you needed a gyroscope for these thin (Score:2)
Maybe the most elaborate, custom built steadicams have gyroscopes, but according to this faq [kiwifilm.com], most, including the $44,000 model, do not, as gyroscopes increase mass.