Steadicam

[David Thrasher]

I took a look at the link provided about the homemade Steadicam (http://steadycam.org which redirected to http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/steadycam/) and didn't think much of the solution. All that was accomplished by it was making the camera heavier, giving it more inertia and thus making it a little harder to shake. It looks like a muscle killer and a great backache producer that really didn't isolate the camera from jerky movements, just made it a heavier object to shake. 

If I get an opportunity in among all the other stuff I've got to do right now, I'm going to try to come up with a better one. As I see it the solution isn't making the camera heavy but rather counter weighting it like having two people at opposite ends of a see-saw, with the pivot point being the point that would be supported by the operator. It would probably have to be set up so that pivots would exist on both X and Y coordinates with some sort of a harness on the camera operator's body to properly distribute the weight of the whole rig, allowing for longer sessions. Of course, I would have to build one to make sure my theorys about all of this are correct. If I do, I'll make up plans and post them on a webpage.

-Dave