SteadIcam vs. SteadYcam
 

Someone asked about this article I wrote some time ago, that I had posted here but people had difficulties downloading. So here it is again. Hope it is easier to download. It is 25MB PDF. SteadIcam vs. SteadYcam Enjoy.

Thank you for your interesting article.

You're welcome.

Thanks for putting that up CK. Good work.

Regarding just the name: as is the case with many products, the term Steadicam as become somewhat generic for "body-mounted camera stabilizer". In strict terms, it's a registered trademark licensed by Tiffen for Garrett Brown's invention (which was once called the "Brown Stabilizer"...!) When used to describe the genuine article, it's always capitalized, never hyphenated or spelled with a "y", and nominally should have the ® mark.

Since we've started using other systems in the past 15 years, no other term has sprung up to replace the original so although we may have PRO or XCS rigs we still call ourselves Steadicam operators. It's certainly become confusing in recent years with so many small rigs out there--one who flies a Merlin is quite literally a Steadicam operator, but it's quite a different animal than an 85 lb rig!

I'm glad you approve CP. :) Thank you for all your wise thoughts and advice. I hope this kinds of sums up all speculative questions that we hear of every day on different forums about this topic.