Microfilmmaker Magazine - Tips & Tricks - How to Build the $14 Steadycam, Pg. 5

How to Build the $14 Steadycam, Pg. 5

	Useful Add-Ons
	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.
	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.
	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.
	Large Sled for Bigger Cameras Here's a simple way to add a big platform to the top of the steadycam for use with larger cameras (or simply so you can turn the mounting bolt rather than turning the camera). Cut a rectangular piece of wood at least as large as the base of your camera. Buy a 1/2" flange to replace the mounting cap on top. Put screws through 3 of the 4 holes of the flange into the wood platform. Drill a 1/4" hole all the way through the platform where the 4th hole in the flange is and use that for your mounting bolt. You can see a close up of this on the left (click to enlarge). This is a quick and easy way to really beef up the camera support for bigger cameras (ex: 16mm film, Canon XL1, Sony VX2000, etc.). Unfortunately, you can't the use inverting bracket in combination with this.
	Compatible with Many Professional Tripod Heads The mounting bolt can also fit many professional tripod heads shown on the left (click to enlarge). This allows you to quicky and easily add the benefits of a true tripod mount such as greater mounting security, tilt control, and a quick-release platform.

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/ )