Helicopter Parts Make For Amazing DIY Camera Stabilization 78
Iddo Genuth writes "Videographer Tom Antos developed an advanced DIY camera stabilizer which can hold almost any DSLR or mirrorless camera steady for video photography. Although this surely isn't as sophisticated (and super expensive) as the professional MVI M10 handheld 3-axis digital stabilized camera gimbal, its still quite impressive especially when you consider it only costs a few hundred dollars rather then tens of thousands — that is if you feel like building it yourself." Antos' design takes advantage of stabilized gimbal systems made for hanging cameras on remote-controlled helicopters, and does a very impressive job for its price.
Re:The point of a steady cam is to be steady. (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree. Look at the terrain he's going over. That is a pretty extreme use of a handheld camera and the stabilization is quite impressive. On more more typical (flatter) terrain, where you are tracking a subject, not randomly panning up/down I think it would be quite usable. Certainly as good or better than the mini-steady cam setups that most of us could afford.
Re:Google "DIY Steadycam" (Score:2, Interesting)
The first two had demo videos. It's hard to compare, though, because the first one is a heavily edited short and the second is just a guy walking around on mostly flat ground. Both are better, sure, but this guy is walking through a very rocky and vertical trail. It's not perfectly stable, but it's also much more challenging terrain and he's clearly not really editing the shot to try to look professional.
I think this is an interesting concept that definitely needs more exploration.
Re:Why isn't this done digitally? (Score:5, Interesting)
Mechanical stabilization has the advantage of keeping the focal center in the center of the image. If you're moving a crop box around a frame, you're going to get this weird effect where the point that parallel lines meet bounces around the frame.
Re:Tripod (Score:4, Interesting)
You can't make these sorts of shots [vimeo.com] with a tripod.