Tickled pink with new Home built Crane!
 

I just got back from the Powder coaters so I dont have any new pics of it looking finished but here it is naked

http://prohdstudio.com/_wsn/page3.html

A Wrought Iron buddy of mine owed me some favors so he said I could use any aluminum I needed and he gave me a 30 minute crash coarse on welding aluminum and 2 days later ( $175 in the hole for 6' tripod and accuators) and he had it powdercoated free and I am as happy as can be! I am amazed at what a differance crane shots make, everytime I view one for the first time I am blown away at how high 13' looks on film and how action packed a tree or shrub can be in motion. I spent an hour tonight playing around with it and ran out of light to take pictures of it looking professional.

Just after my last weld my buddy walks in with a catalog of what I SHOULD have built it out of for a small amount more and could have extended it to 20' which I will someday this winter, if anyones interested its called T-Locks aluminum ( no welding needed)

If your in Oregon and want help building one or use mine let me know , They are very nice

Most cool.

What sort of tripod is that?

Michael

Aluminium welding is so tricky... 30 minute crash course? WOW! Great job...

Michael,
the tripod is a Dewalt Contracters Heavy duty tripod $69 at Lowes
It was the only one I saw that had extruded square aluminum and I actually extended it in the store , got down under it and hung from the pedastal to check its strength ( hope nobody saw me).

Chris,

Yes aluminum was seeming to get the better of me the first day but I figured out to take everything in SMALL steps because aluminum gets so hot so fast and thats when you start blowing through.

I could get about 1" of good looking welds at a time in my second day with a wire feed.

I spent most of my time Die Grinding the tight spots (inside corners) and grinding my ugly welds to resemble some sort of representation of two peices connected together

Mark, can you post some video from your creation? Anything would suffice... even at low res just to see the stability and effect of a crane shot... even that shrub would be interesting just to give us an idea of what you can do.

Hey I want to personally thank you for putting this up so far... I'm VERY impressed. With only 32 posts you really crash landed onto the dvinfo scene... most of us don't put up such helpful posts for a long time... if at all. So thanks!

I've been wanting to do something like this for a long time now... you just convinced me that NOW is the time.

Also if you can expand on the catalog/sources of the T-Lock Aluminum and also those trick actuators... some video showing them in motion... or the ACTUAL video while using them... would be great... also what's all involved with that? Cost, difficulty, rigging, operation... etc?

This could really grow into a super-thread.

If your video output looks as good as I think it will you're going to inspire a lot of us to finally tackle this approach.

Mark,

Please describe the pneumatic (?) controls you are using for pan and tilt; how well do they work? What does the control console look like? Can you feather moves? Thanks! Looks like a great project.

It looks like the 2 long arms on the back are the pan/tilt controls.

Hey guys, I will try and answer some questions quickly because I actually have a shoot in 3 hours and Im getting my fire wired monitor hooked up right now and needed a break , also Ill get some new pics tonight while Im filming.

I will have no trouble showing you guys shots but i need somewhere to upload to, my site is real stingy so any help would be good and since Im shooting HD it would be nice to show it off in a media 9 format ( it looks spectacular on my HD TV and even better on computer!)

On the pneumatics, they are great!

http://www.clippard.com/cylinders/

4 Clippard - 1-1/16" bore and 4" stroke (stainless steel - air or fluid driven- 1/8" NPT quick connects and 5/32" hose) $110 locally in stock and great people to deal with!!! I am using air right now but will change to anti freeze soon when I am not being bombarded with filming.

Yes indeed the 2 bars on the back are pan and tilt and the reason for the length is that with a 6' tripod and the camera laying on the ground, it gives me perfect height in the controls and as I drop or raise I just slide my hands smoothly, disadvantage= planning to hit between tripod legs at full height , they might get chopped a couple inches


This stuff is the aluminum I should have used ! my buddy figured we could extend upto 25 feet with no trouble in the same size configuration as it is now ( 10 ft long and we are going to build a trailer next for transport as well as a dolly, shoul cost about $150 to build....I cant wait even though it fits in the back of my suburban as of now)

http://www.tslots.com/

awesome stuff , not T-locks as I posted

Gotta run will take new pics and post tonight as she is a whole differant beast today

Mark... you can send me up to an 8mb file at a time... my email always has about 1mb in it and it holds 10mb... I'll host anything you want me to.

Use my first intitial and last name all lowercase at charter dot net.

I'll host as you post.

Personally I like wma best because it downloads and plays so fast.

See, I told you this thread would explode.

As I have been recently building a small jib of my own, a friend who used to build models for a living sent me these links for ideas about materials. Similar to the tslots, at least in the same ball park. Just thought I'd add to the resource guide!

http://www.outwater.com/catalog04/outwater/opi180.htm

http://www.8020.net/index.asp

Matt is going to be kind enough to post a 6meg, 1min 29 second sample(matt I resent a lil bigger one)
that I shot last night. The original is 40MB 720P and looks pretty nice

I'm sorry for the quality but we ran out of time and we were fighting the rain ( next addition to the crane is an umbrella or a hood) it was also windy, so when camera was fully extended the camera was getting a slight side to side wobble. But remember 1 person can carry this system so it is a trade off.

In one shot I hit a tree and got rain drops one the lense, I left it in so you could see how stable it is if you hit an object. You can see the raindrops in the rest of the pictures but I could not see them on my small monitor (need a bigger monitor)

In the new pictures that I posted in my original link you can see that I added rubber pipe insulation to the cage for protection on interior shots of peoples property, I think this is why it did so well when it bounced off of the small tree.

Chris those links are great! I saw the Tslot sample and the thing that is really cool about it was that it had a "smoke" look to it as to not "stick out" so bad at fucntion such as weddings.

My crane works really good and I am happy but.......it could be much nicer and I will change a few things next time, I will let you all know tonight because I am going to try some serious shots tonight, some in the house ( wish me luck on not hitting one of the 50K chandeliers)

http://www.gettreel.com/craneshots[1].wmv

Normally I use a word or phrase and link a page off of that... this cut 'n paste thing isn't my style... but the [brackets] mess with the coding needed to do that... so you gotta' cut and paste!

Looks good... I was going to score something for it but maybe later tonight. The crane video is so interesting that it doesn't really need sound for effect.

Hey Matt thanks!
Be expecting a much improve version in your mail tonight or tomorrow since I am improving and yesterday provided better shooting (lighting) situations and at noon today we move inside. hopefully my nervousness of breaking something in the house wont transfer up the crane. I wish the internet was improved towards a couple minute feature in 720P full sized because this footage from yesterday is really cool and my first night is in the trash ( in one shot I come a few inches above the water in the pool and into a wide pan of the house)

Mark, in a word, WOW.
Thanks for sharing, truely impressive, really smooth.
What did you use for bushings?
And what was the total cost?

Cliff,

WOW is right but not on that footage, cranes are really cool but take practice and its always exciting to see the results in full resolution with good Lighting, hopefully I will have some time to get the new stuff up quick so you guys can see what these things are supposed to do.

Pan & Tilt is overated no matter how smooth it is and trust me its great but only for "setting up" from monitor position, the less movement you get at the camera on a swivel the better because even the pros with $50K cameras avoid panning at all costs because it is an unatural thing at the base of the camera off a crane and I have about 1 hour of footage to prove it. The best shots are leaving the camera locked and let the crane pan for you at least in the Digital world, film may be differant.

Total cost ( for me) is

Aluminum free , for you it could run $175-$250

pneumatics $110ish complete

since I welded everything nuts and bolts ( stainless steel) $20

I used brass inserts and nylon washers instead of bearings, this is a wash at probably $20

Tripod $69, mine is fine but if you are gonna do it, do it right and invest big here..........this is the heart of a crane and mine takes 2 people to operate efficiantly on SETUP ( hills and such)

10' Firewire $29 for monitor

Powdercoating is unnecessary but aluminum is very bright and distracting in sunlight (wedding video) , aluminum primer and flat black paint would be $10

Weights/counter balance 20-30lbs $5 for the nice ones

If anyone wants to build one and needs little pieces of this and that maybe me shipping it may be cheaper than buying full sheets or 10-20' lengths of certain items that you only need 4" or 5"X5" and so on, planning would be critical to save money ( I had access to anything but your local Wrought Iron gate/ Heating& air conditioning people surely have scraps laying about for reasonable prices.

the wife informed me that I had $300 ish invested including the umbrellas i bought yesterday for above camera and monitor incase I get caught in rain again

<<<-- Originally posted by Mark Paschke : Cliff,
The best shots are leaving the camera locked and let the crane pan for you at least in the Digital world, film may be different. -->>>

This is good to hear--the jib I'm (still) working on has no ability to actively pan during use. I'd wondered about it, but adding that feature seemed a much harder thing to do than just building a stable platform out there for the camera.

I did add an arm for independant tilting, but I'm guessing I'll use that more for framing the shot than for any dynamic use.

I'm curious about the tripod--does it not behave well? Does it have a wiggle in it? Those things seem so solid, but I guess they're not built to have stuff with such weight swinging around on them...

Footage looks great! I hope mine comes out half as well.

Chris

Chris,
the tripod is fine for weight support and does not wiggle but it is a surveyers tripod and the legs flop around because theres no middle bracing ( I attached chain to the inside to keep them from spreading completely apart but it does nothing forthe inward movement of the legs.

My wife helps me setup and we are pretty efficient so far, we did about 20 differant shots covering about a 3 acre square on some serious hillsides with little trouble

<<Pan & Tilt is overated no matter how smooth it is and trust me its great but only for "setting up" from monitor position, the less movement you get at the camera on a swivel the better because even the pros with $50K cameras avoid panning at all costs because it is an unatural thing at the base of the camera off a crane and I have about 1 hour of footage to prove it. The best shots are leaving the camera locked and let the crane pan for you at least in the Digital world, film may be differant.>>

Mark:

Set-and-forget jib shots are great and are the only solution when the system is not designed to be actively operated. But I can't say that I agree with your statement. If the head is meant to be operated during the move, which is the case with products starting with the Losmandy Freestyler, up through the Jimmy Jib and on to the higher end remote heads such as Power Pod, Hot Head etc., there's nothing "overrated" or "unnatural" about it!

It has nothing to do with the cost of the camera, only around the nature of the shoot. I have done a number of crane shots with DV cameras, only a few of which have I signed off on avoiding panning simply because the hardware didn't allow it (which I knew going in). Here's a deceptively simple shot made with an XL1 (not even an XL1s, mind you!) that required continuous backpanning all the way through. Here's a description of how we did that shot (from this thread:)

"The final crane shot (using a 23' Fischer arm and Hot Gears) was technically tricky, because it required the track to be laid perpendicular to the arm, and as the base was dollied left to right the arm was swung in a countering fashion so that the camera appeared to be pulling straight back. Any variation in speed between the various folks operating the base and the arm meant that the camera would wander from side to side during the pullback. Not to mention that it is a challenge to operate such a shot, in that one is constantly backpanning (dialing the pan just to keep the camera pointed straight ahead). Once the dolly had finished moving, we then swung the arm fully from left to right along a 180 degree arc while booming up, which gave us that massive travel as dad walks away."

Charles,

Great -spectacular-stupendous shot! did you get that on your first try? I know , I know, the actor kept screwing up right?

First thing employed here that defeats my statement is a Dollie in which makes my statement about stationary crane a little unfair because to make that dollie shot effective pan had to be incorporated or a differant track run setup ( I am actually starting my dollie system next week)

Regardless I will try and back up my claim using your shot, I see 4 (Im not sure what they are called but pick one"Glitch" or "unatural movement" or "something the brain knows happened where the scene jerked ever so slightly and some just watching may not even catch it or care" but me doing alot of crane shots in the last couple days spotted them pronto.

#1- right after he puts backpack on , glitch right

#2 - right as the tree leaves view of the screen , also the biggest ( most noticable) one

#3 which consists of maybe 3 slight ones in a row upon him entering the cab

had they been smooth as butter I would have stuck with the " lets compare apples to apples " thing but the dollie being included throws oranges in.

I will expand on what I meant pertaining to a stationary crane , If I crane up but tilt down this kind of defeats the purpose unless some tree branches or something sweeps into view.

I can crane up and add pan (which I have done smoothly) but you are taking one cool thing and distracting from that by adding a not so cool thing unless your camera is capable of seriously smooth pans ( mine is not unless ultra slow and at this point I only have 13' to work with ) again why ruin a good thing by trying to add another dimension to what made the first thing neat to begin with.

The guy/s/gal/s who shot the "Kill Bill" Dance Club Scene , now that scene alone makes my statement total BS as does yours but when I get my dollie done then I will take the word "overated" out and add "extremely hard"

I went to the movie "Hero" the other night and was blown away at the filming except whenever they decided to ruin it with a pan or two but you knew they were pans right away because they were blurry, seemed out of focus or something unatural, unless of course Jack Daniels is involved.

Maybe Im just picky and not making sense

Wish I could remember the ops name... The Drum Corps International Championships DVDs have a jib/crane cam for field shots. If you want to see great work of action footage with a crane, check it out (rental? DVDs are $100). I might be able to post a clip where the head of his rig is in my shot. But no promises. He works all day and when it gets boring, has been known to move the rig to inches from someone who has to stay in place. This year, he knocked a hat off during finals ;)

Update - this is not a homebuilt, but is the above mentioned rig used for action shots similar to Charles' example. Sorry about the quality, as this was a quick pan, so it is interlaced and blurry.

http://www.versatilemediasolutions.c.../blurryjib.jpg

Mark:

Fair enough, I'll take my operating knocks for the backpanning issues you noticed in that clip! It sure ain't perfect. But it was a really tough shot, even at the feature level I would have been sweating a bit due to the extent of the backpanning.

I certainly agree that if the hardware does not allow for smooth pans and tilts, they should be avoided as they will muck up the good stuff. But please, take it from me (and I don't like to flaunt this stuff around here, but you can see where I'm coming from when I say "take it from me" by clicking on the www link), with the appropriate gear, pros do not avoid panning or tilting. I've done many shots that sweep in from a high angle into a closeup, which is not possible without at least tilt and probably pan as well.

<<If I crane up but tilt down this kind of defeats the purpose unless some tree branches or something sweeps into view.>>

It honestly doesn't. It's a classic, standard move that can be used to illustrate a character in anguish (picture them grabbing their head and screaming "ARRGHHH!" as the camera pulls up and away); or think about the shot in "Shawshank Redemption", craning down on Tim Robbins in the rainstorm after escaping from jail ( no noticeable tilt in the shot, but I'll bet you an apple AND an orange it required it). I've done plenty of shots that start way above the actor and cranes down to or below their eye level; can't be done without a tilt.

Having foreground goodies like trees in the foreground is a great thing and always worth putting into the shot. But it's not the only reason to make a jib/crane move.

Mark, I think we are saying basically the same thing here...aren't we??!

Mark, you are clearly getting tired of the crane, I suggest selling it to me right away.