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Helicopter Parts Make For Amazing DIY Camera Stabilization
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.
Why not take the same sensors data and apply the same computation but into digitally manipulating the image on the fly instead of actuating motors?
Do you usually charge money for your spare time?
Owls appear to be a pretty suitable stabiliser, too.
I like this man's ingenuity, and DIY ethic. But the final video is obviously jerky and unusable, which he explains by saying you need to balance the camera better than he did in an earlier step. Perhaps reshooting a better example with the camera balanced would have been better approach to get people interested. Because after watching the video, we have to take his word for it that this will actually work. Which doesn't really make me want to run out and try it.
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle. - Plato
Some of us *gasp* LIKE building projects like this in our spare time.
There's the door, please hand in your geek card on the way out.
Gimbal my arse
That shouldn't be a problem, I've managed to locate a suitable attachment point for the fixture right in the middle of it.
Ezekiel 23:20
Stabilizing the sensor does not work when filming with rectilnear lenses. Nearly all lenses are rectilinear, which means they scale the image differently in different parts of the field of view. If you move the sensor to stabilize the movie, then objects will appear to strech and contract as if they were made of Jell-O.
Examples:
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
If you need to ask the question, you'll never understand the answer.
You can't make these sorts of shots with a tripod.
They might if they saw a bottle of honey in an odd place.
What's wrong with tripods or image stabilization?
Gimbal rigs are far more effective. You can make a gimbal rig out of a tripod, and throw digital IS on top of it for some great results. You can also buy these devices on amazon all day long for less than what this gentleman spent. This project is all about the DIY with helicopter parts I guess.
Really??? Where? I looked on Amazon and all I see are mechanical stabilizers which keep the camera level and shoulder rigs with camera control, but no gimbals. The stabilizer that this guy uses for his DIY project is an active stabilizer with motors. It can be adjusted with the RC remote to have different camera angles and will keep the camera at that angle.
But many people enjoy creating things in and of itself.
The whole idea of "why build when I can buy" is why people are so much worse at making things that mostly work, fully work than they used to be. Building things is fun. If it's also significantly cheaper, and nearly as good, why not learn something on the way?
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
The 'labour' in this case is:
Buy ready-made camera stabilisation arm intended for quadrotors
Attach to hand-hold
That's it. That's all he did. Literally bolting one ready-made object to another ready-made object. I was expecting something like using the high-speed servos for moving the swash-plate to and writing his own controller, but this is a VERY low-effort and low-labour approach.
More than that, this hack only takes a few minutes to do. TFA links to an advert-ridden blog, but Tom's own page has more details
http://tomantosfilms.com/?p=474
It's basically a model helicopter gimbal velcroed to an ordinary camera shoulder mount. Clever, and unchallenging to build.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."