Camera stabilizers

[Kathi Carey]

On 3/7/04 5:30 AM, "Macintosh Digital Video List"
<MacDV at lists.themacintoshguy.com> wrote:

> Message-ID: <3651471.1078629668249.JavaMail.christianfilm at mac.com>
> Date: Sat, 06 Mar 2004 19:21:08 -0800
> From: Christopher Zayachkowski <christianfilm at mac.com>
> Subject: [MacDV] Camera stabalizers
> 
> Kathi,
> 
> I found your post about Steadycams to be very useful and resourceful and I
> think you are right. What do you suggest for a small indie shoot? I am
> uncertain which stabalizer devide to go
> with. Steaditracker? Glidecam?
> 
> Chris

Chris,

My advice would be to get into a store and try them on with your camera
attached, if at all possible.  This way you get to see how they work and
feel how the weight of the camera is managed.  Birns & Sawyer in L.A. is
good.  If you're on the east coast I can get you a reference for someplace
in NY.

The one I'm going to buy is a Handycam shoulder mount.  Birns & Sawyer
manufactures their own industrial grade shoulder mount with single or double
pistol grips.  It goes by the name "Handycam" and sells for $295 (you can
probably go to their website to buy it).  They do carry a 3-arm gimbol mount
"steadycam" unit that mounts to a waist harness. It runs about $1600, is
made in Germany and is exceptionally high quality for the money.  However,
that is too much $$ for me.  The shoulder mount, however, carries a lot of
the camera weight (and counter weight) on your shoulder and you only really
have to "balance" the camera with your hand/arm (and you can use both hands
-- one on the handle of the handycam and one on your camera, or you can have
two handles if you want).  It is also adjustable for either using the
viewfinder or flip-out lcd.

Of course, the best advice of all is to only use the "steady cam" device for
one or two shots in your whole full-length feature.  This depends, of
course, on your story, but you don't want a feature full of "fancy shots".
It's never a good idea to have your camera work be the most obvious and
first thing people notice about your feature -- you want to tell a story.
So, really, you may only need a fancy tracking or moving shot once or twice.
With that said, you could rent a device for a day or two for much less than
the cost of buying one.

Hope that helps.

Kathi