Steadicam zephyr-now shipped
 

I've just been advised by Tiffen that my zephyr, from the first production run, has just been shipped.
More details as I get them.

I got to fly one, briefly, at CES on Thursday. All I can say is that I'll probably put my Pilot up for sale!

Great news Julian, (not on the Pilot sale!) My Zephyr's in Sydney now but I've decided to pick it up in 9 days as I'm going straight into a steadicam workshop that weekend. Would you mind elaborating on what impressed you for others viewing here?

My Steadicam experience is quite limited, having only used the Pilot, but the added load capacity on the Zephyr is an obvious plus. It's fairly easy to exceed the load capacity on the Pilot with a Canon XH-A1 and a few accessories.

The Zephyr arm is considerably more heavy duty, both in form and function. The entire rig can be adjusted without any tools, unlike the Pilot, which uses that single Allen wrench.

The grip diameter on the Zephyr has been increased, so it feels much more like a big rig than does the Pilot.

The Zephyr can be used as both a 12v and 24V system (optional equipment is required for 24V).

The Zephyr has a slightly better standard monitor than the Pilot, and an HD version is available.

The vest is wonderful! I should have taken more photos of it to point out the differences from the Pilot vest. I was told you can purchase the vest separately, but if I heard the price correctly, it would be cost-prohibitive for me to upgrade... I'd rather put that money aside for upgrading the entire system.

I only flew the Zephyr for a few minutes, and didn't fully adjust it to fit me, but its operation was silky smooth, and like I said, it left the impression on me that I wanted to upgrade. Unfortunately, even after trying to give the fine folks at Tiffen a lot of pressure on the subject, they still didn't agree to "accidentally" forget to pack the Zephyr and leave it for me to "find"!

I've attached a few photos of the Zephyr, and a photo of Tiffen's Michael Craigs, demonstrating the new Steadicam Smoothie for the iPhone... which, given the consumer demographic of the people at CES, garnered more attention than the other Steadicam units on display.

The old zyphyr is looking nice! seems to have come a bit further since NAB.

The vest looks very very good, better than the old Flyer vest.

really makes me want to sell my pilot.

Haha great shot of Mike!