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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?"
LEGO (C) Hand Held Stabilizer
xox,
Dead Nancy
I've built one of these too, and all things being equal, I think you would be better off spending $120 to get one of the Steady cam clones. True, he has some cool shots on his page but those are not nearly as easy as he makes it out to be. Maybe I am just clumsy.
When I walk forward my system wants to behave like a pendulum causing the camera to rock forward and back around the horizonal fulcrum. If things aren't perfectly balanced it is very difficult to keep the cameras tilt at a given attitude. Your left hand (if you were the author in the photo on the page) will not be able to keep the attitude without pendulum style oscillation. It's also difficult to make the camera turn around the camera of the horiontal bar and the fact that the rotational inertia of the person-pipe-camera system is not appropriate for turning around the camera.
Beyond those basic problems: it's also hard to hold on to and I tend to smack into door frames and innocent bystanders with the horizonal pipe.
One of the key parts to a steady cam rig is a gimbal joint that isolates tilt/tip motions of your hand from the "mass" that has the camera. Without this isolation it's really hard to get good shots without Zen master balance or just being lucky.
If anyone out there wants to make a Steady-cam like rig, I suggest they copy something like the Flowpod. Note the gimbal connecting the handle to the body of the device.