Hello everyone.. So I am in the market for a Stabilizer and am trying to find the best solution for the equipment I own. I have never owned nor flown any sort of steadicam or related equipment so I am not sure what I am looking for in equipment.

What I own is a Canon T2i a set of 60's Nikkor lenses ranging from 28mm to 58mm as well as a Juicedlink 231 which runs a cable out and up to a microphone I have placed in the hot shoe. Now this thing can be pretty heavy..i'm not entirely sure the exact weight as of yet but am suspecting something like the Merlin may not suffice.

Other solutions for sound equipment is up for suggestion as I have been out of the market for awhile and am not up to date on the newest line of audio equipment for DSLR cameras.

How I had it set up is all "in camera" No external sound device because I was shooting documentary footage in Brazil.

Portable handheld stabilizer like a Merlin or Blackbird. Put a Mantrotto quick release plate on it so you can shoot handheld when you need to..

You'll need to practice and practice.

As for sound, depends what you need to accomplish. I shot with my 60D and a Zoom H1n for a week in Zambia and it worked well...but I had to improvise a y-cable and a hotshoe y-bracket (from Cool Lux) for monitoring and feeding to the camera (as well as mounting a light). The zoom mic is good for nat sound, but you'll need to plug in a lav mic for interviews.

With the T21 you may need to record separate audio even if the Zoom is connected to the camera, because of auto-level issues with the audio on T2i. Not sure...don't have that model.

Finally, on a stabilizer, the height and rigidity of your audio is as important as the overall weight. I'd avoid putting the audio rig on the camera when on a stabilizer if I could avoid it.

I'm interested what others have done....

Yeah, Audio equipment on the rig wouldn't be my first choice..but its kind of what I have at the moment so i'm trying to figure out what other people are doing also.

Thanks for the input!

I fly my T2i on a Merlin, and definitely leave the audio off the cam.

on the T2i it is pretty much worthless to do audio with anyways.

What about something like the Glidecam 4000 Pro?