Optical Image Stabilzation On?
 

Just wondering whether it's a good idea to turn on OIS (as my HVX200 calls it) when using the Steadicam. I'm guessing most pros leave it off, but thought I'd ask anyway.

TIA

Nope, leave it off, just as you would on any other stable camera mount.

- Mikko

In the manual it states there is no harm leaving this enabled, particularly for zoom shots.
I've not read a good reason why to turn it off?

When the optical stabilisation is on,the camera tries to decide what is unintentional movement,ie shaking,this is ok when you holding the cam in your hand,however when you're using a tripod,when you start panning,for the first part of the pan the cam will try to work out if it's an unintentional shake,when it realises it's not it'll try and "catch up".Put you cam on a tripod and pan left and right,with stabilisation on and off,you should see a difference,i know i can on my cam.

Take control of your shots by leaving everything you can on manual. No electronics deciding what you intend to shoot. OIS is really only effective if you are shooting stable scenes and held at extreme telephotos...and don't want it to look quite as handheld as it will end up looking without the OIS.

Any movement in the scene can potentially cause the OIS to decide that that is supposed to be the stable part of the shot and it'll snap to following that object until it reaches the edge of its ability to follow, or the object clears up enough of the frame for the OIS to decide that it wants to use the background as the object to lock onto as stable.

the steadicam alone should provide sufficient stabilisiation, if there is still some jerky movement in a sequence you absolutely want to keep it´s probably a better idea to stabilise in post - if you sacrifice 10% of your resolution you can stabilise pretty much anything.
I´d also guess that OIS would probably cause visible stickyness when panning, at least on my old xl1 it did.