This
is setup to do a bird's eye shots such as the picture
earlier. With this setup, I will be able to go from a
birds eye to a level shot all in one motion. I won't be
able to tilt up very far in this configuration, but I
could do if I set it up differently. Again, I wanted this
to be as versatile as possible.
Moving
to the back, the main arm is counter weighted by cheap,
second hand lifting weights bought for 15 cents a pound
at a play-it-again sports-type store. I designed a way
to rough- and fine-tune the balance with counter-weights.
The rough way to adjust the balance is to add more weights--simple
enough, just unscrew the wing nut. I bought 20, 15, 7,
5, and 2 1/2 pound weights. Metric weights work just as
well.
This
is the fine-tuning of the balance. The counterweights
are attached to a smaller piece of box tubing that slides
inside the main arm. By sliding the counterweight farther
or closer to the pivot, it will alter the weight supporting
the camera on the other side of the jib arm. Again, I'm
told this is basic physics. I designed these two wing
nuts to keep the counterweights solidly in place. I drilled
a hole in the box tubing large enough for the thumb screw
threads to loosely fit it. Then I welded nuts onto the
box tubing over the holes. So, when I tighten the thumb
screws, it clamped down on the inner box tubing. There
was a problem, however. After hundreds of adjustments,
I didn't want to crimp and destroy the thin walled box
tubing. So, I created an insert to go between the thumb
screws and the box tubing.
This
is that insert. I welded on oversized nuts, and then ground
them down to better 'locate' the insert onto the thumb
screws. This setup has worked very well. The only downside
is that there's one more small piece to loose when transporting
the jib arm.
Moving
right along, this is the base. All the steel was scrap
steel. It was overkill, but free, so I used it anyway.
I did feel it was important to gusset the base to the
wood round so there'd be little give and play. A little
wobble here could dramatically alter the framing of your
shot. The metal is bolted to a plywood round bought a
home depot. The round is then bolted to a lazy Susan bearing
(also bought at home depot), then the lazy Susan bearing
is bolted to a second plywood round. Then this round is
bolted to a metal frame by which the tripod legs attach.
I must admit, this is the weakest part of my design. The
!@#$ lazy Susan dolly is made of cheap stamped sheet metal
and after the rig fell over off my dolly in an intense
day of shooting, it bent the bearing–I've since replaced
it. It will still work for you, just make sure you don't
put any angular pressure on it (that includes severely
imbalanced loads). To the right, you can see a platform
with two holes on it. That was originally intended for
the field monitor. I decided I preferred to just gaffer's
tape the monitor where ever it was most comfortable for
that particular shot. The monitor is a POS lcd with about
250 total lines of resolution. The only thing it's good
for is framing. This monitor can run plugged into an outlet
or via 12 volt camera battery (like the ones for ENG cameras)
so it's good for loaction work.
Another
angle. In this shot, you can see the bubble to tell if
the device is level. This is important as when you pan,
your horizon will get canted or Dutch (or sideways in
non-camera talk) if you're not level.
