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.

Comments

The point of a steady cam is to be steady.

[605dave]

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.

Re:yes because of course labor is free

[thegarbz]

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.

Re:get a new word for what they describe

[K. S. Kyosuke]

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.

Re:Or mount it on an owl.

[wvmarle]

Get a smaller camera... or a bigger owl.

Google "DIY Steadycam"

[Fnord666]

Or you can just google "DIY steadycam" and find any number of projects for $30 or less and the demo videos are more stable than this rig.

Examples:

• how-bulid-30-diy-steadycam
• Frugal Floater
• Krotocam

Why [make it | fix it | climb it | run it | ...] ?

[csumpi]

If you need to ask the question, you'll never understand the answer.

Re:Why isn't this done digitally?

[TheGavster]

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.