Toronto Photography Meetup Group

I wanted to try something new so I started this project a few weeks ago. It's still far from perfect but it's getting there.

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This is funny. I saw you filming this at Edward Gardens on Sunday. I was across the river from you shooting a model. We were talking about your contraption too.

Looks like it works great! Does it support longer telephotos though?

Oh, that was you!

Never tried it yet. So far I've only tried it with my 16-35mm and 35mm.

Longer/heavier lenses should work as long as I have enough counterweight. I can slide the gimbal fore/aft so that can compensate for the difference in weight distribution. But I doubt I would do it very often since I think wide to mid focal lengths are more common for this application and that would be a lot of weight to be holding in one hand.

Looks pretty good! Nicely done.

very nice.. good job! I need one!

nice work!

wow very impressive great video/music

I like! what is the rough cost of your new little contraption?

Wow, fantastic effort!

wow looks really good!

i was looking to make one myself, but the gimbal part looked either too hard to design or too costly to make conveniently...

It cost me about $70.00.

True. The gimbal is probably the most complex part and can be difficult to find parts that will work properly together.

Nice job Xerox. I've been thinking of buying this one for my gf1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9RiE1Lia1E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBP6RPgPKPo&NR=1

Your girlfriend?

Not remotely. lol - Panasonic GF1

killer work man

must be nice to have such a beautiful and willing model too

Looks like it works well, as long as you stay within the recommended max camera+lens weight.

any chance of putting together a DIY guide? the vids look pretty decent, but with a how to guide (materials and a quick set up guide with pictures), it will make it much better and valuable for us.
thanks for sharing anyways

Great stuff!
I'd love to build one of these contraptions.

There are plenty of great DIY sites online so I won't bother doing one.

WSCLATER has one of the best and I mostly used his ideas to build mine.

http://www.diycamera.com/stabiliser/index.html

The difficulty is finding parts available to you that will work.

It's _really_ hard to use a steadicam with a tele, even a mild tele like 85mm equiv. The DOF is so short that you'd have to be very good at keeping the exact same distance from your subject and also keep the framing correct, that or have a very good assistant cameraman that can handle the follow focus. If you can manage it tho, the look is _very_ cool.

awesome, thanks.

Any of the parts that you used available locally? as in from Home Depot or Rona for example?

Great, looks like it work quite well.

Sure. All nuts, bolts, washers are from the local hardware store. For me I think that was it. I've made countless runs to the store looking, buying, and returning stuff. Pretty much the other parts are stuff found at home (parts taken from an old broken tripod, stainless steel plate taken from some printing machine, aluminum brackets that I got many many years ago while working at a part time job, etc.) but I'm sure you can find suitable parts at the hardware store too. That's why everyone's DIY will be different - since you have to do with what you have or can find.

this is great, thanks Ryan.

AWESOME seems to work Great!!!