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Build Your Own Steadicam
John Jorsett writes "Always wanted to film one of those cool 'walking' sequences, where the camera stays rock-steady as you trudge along? Well, so did Johnny Chung Lee, except he didn't want to lay out major cash for a professional Steadicam rig, so he built his own for $14. He further claims you can do it in about 20 minutes if you know what you're doing. What more could a cheap, impatient Spielberg wannabe ask for?"
That's not at all what he's doing. The key to the steadycam is that the center of gravity of the apparatus is inside the handle (which is why you need a weight on the end of a pole to counterbalance the camcorder). This means that as you yank the camcorder around by the handle, *only* the position of the camera changes, not the orientation. This removes the much of the "jerkiness" of handheld shots that otherwise screams "low-budget amateur video!" Even without a gimbal mount for the handle, this device can still reduce handheld video jerkiness by a significant amount. Of course a gimbal-mounted handle would be better and would allow easier smooth panning, but it would be hard to do for $14 with commonly-available parts and easy assembly.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
I can kinda understand where you're coming from, but honestly, it kind of erks me. And I've started seeing quite a few of these in this article. This guy spent $14 and maybe thirty minutes to an hour learning how to get the thing to work well, and yet for some reason paying nine times as much and also taking some time to learn to use it seems like a better idea?
Maybe if you can afford it. I'm a poor college kid who has several expensive hobbies. What you are saying is, I would be better off taking my car to a car audio store and having them install my stereo system for me, at the cost of $300 or so. That or I can do it myself, take a few days longer, for $40, and maybe not look quite as good. In my case I thought it was pretty damned close, and even though it took me a lot longer, I got the satisfaction of doing it myself. Thats the key thing here, I think, that most people miss.
He improvised, saved some money, and made a pretty good gadget himself. Decent accomplishment even if it isn't as good as something that costs nine times more. And thats just the cheap one, right?
Now, as far as him trying to make money off of it, I might see where you could complain about that. I think I would in his case too, but I don't think that would bother me as much.