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Useful
Add-Ons |
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These
are some additional things you might want to consider
making because they make the steady cam more versatile.
Click on the images to enlarge.
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Inverting
bracket
One
of the bad things about the steadycam by itself is that
it makes it very difficult to get low angle shots such
as those hovering just above the floor or looking up
at a person. To fix this, you can build a U-shaped inverting
bracket that wraps around the camera allowing it to
be attached on the top rather than the bottom. Click
on the picture to the left to enlarge. You can buy the
aluminum bar at most hardware stores, cut it to length
with a hacksaw, drill the holes, and bend it using the
vise. Make sure the top hole is exactly above the bottom
hole, otherwise it becomes off balance. Use a ruler
to make measurements. You'll lose about 1/8" of an inch
in the bend so be careful and account for that. It's
also much easier to get a controlled bend if you make
a little notch with the hacksaw on the inside where
each bend should be.
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Alternative
weight and bar length
Here I used a 24" tube at the bottom and a 5 pound weight.
This reduces vertical vibration producing smoother walking
shots. But the overall rig gets heavier and tilting
the camera becomes much harder because the center of
gravity is now well below the handle. If you want more
agility, use the sport version with all 10" bars and
the 2-1/2 pound weight. Having a variety of lengths
and weights is a reason you may not want to tighten
everything with a wrench. Hand tightening is usually
good enough to keep everything together. You can see
this version is pretty tall. Using the inverting bracket,
you can get nice near ground video like the sample videos
above.
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Johnny
Lee is a graphic designer and short filmmaker associated
with the Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon
University. His short films include "10-30-15,"
a study of appliances and special effects, and "Happiness",
a short film that has won kudos from Google for it's look
at searching for happiness on the internet.
If
you are interested in having Mr. Lee build a steadycam for
you, you can go to this
site.
(Article
& pictures reprinted with permission from Johnny Lee
from his site: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/steadycam/
)