Steadicam Merlin gets vest and arm at CES
 

Tiffen is showing a great looking arm and vest for the Merlin at CES, apparently. Some info and a picture here.

No word on pricing yet.

Dang it CP! You beat me to it! :-)

However I have some more info...

More photos can be found at: http://www.lasvegassteadicam.com/merlin/


The arm is a smaller version of the Flyer arm (which is regarded as the best lightweight arm ever) and vest. The system features a standard adjustable socket block, and shares the famous tools-free Steadicam "Iso-elastic" design that makes the bigger arms from Steadicam increidbly smooth and responsive.

The arm lifts around 3-10lbs.

It has an amazing 28" boom range - that's almsot the same as the Flyer and G-series arms, and more than the Master/Ultra arm!

The arm-vest connections is by way of a standard socket block thats the same size [and compatible with] the Flyer's socket block.

It'll be possible to put other am posts on the arm to allow for use of other selds in adition to the Merlin (though I can't imagine why you'd want to, perhaps a light flyer sled..)

The vest is super lite weight and uses all velcro closures (no squeaky plastic clips!).



I think that this rig will prety much knock the ball out of the park as far as options for medium weight cameras like the DVX, HVX, and other similar sized DV and HDV cameras.

No doubt that the system will also be on display at NAB in April, if not sooner.

More updates from me as I hear them.

- Mikko

Explains the Flyer promo over the past few months.

I know it will take me forever to save for it, but I am really excited about getting this (and a Merlin) for my XH-A1!

how much?
 

I know it's all speculation at this point, but anyone care to take a stab at what one of these will cost?

I have heard on another forum, as low as $2500 and as high as $4000, according to Robert Starling, a Steadicam Op in LV, NV. He was there at the showing, wearing the vest, etc.

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet! Anybody care to share rumors on when this will be released?

WOW!! I was hoping they would release an arm and vest for the Merlin! I know there were rumors for a while. Now the only questions are when and how much $$$...


Hopefully, they can keep the price in line with Merlin and similar handheld stabilizers. I just can't see dropping $4000 for an arm/vest on an $800 Merlin. The Merlin arm/vest setup may be the closest way I will have to operating a "full" Steadicam rig.

more price stuff
 

"Hopefully, they can keep the price in line with Merlin and similar handheld stabilizers. I just can't see dropping $4000 for an arm/vest on an $800 Merlin."

This thing is built by Tiffen. There's no way it will come in for anything under $2500. If I'm wrong, I'll buy 2 the day they come out. I'm guessing it's more like $3500 without the Merlin, $4000 with. I'm willing to bet that at that price it's worth every penny and then some.
I'm excited about this product. I'd be more excited if I had the 4 grand burning a hole in my pocket.

Flying with the arm and vest you'll probably need to add the docking stand to the budget.

I'm going over the Tiffen factory to test out the new vest and arm on Monday, so I will post my thoughts shortly thereafter.

We look forward to your report CP.

- Mikko

Can't wait to read your review Charles. I'm sure it'll just confirm my suspicions that Tiffen's got a winner on its hands!

I just realised that because there is no monitor at the bottom and the position of the camera's LCD screen it will have to be operated with the camera on the right hand side of the body. And perhaps that will be the only way?

it looks terrific. Can't wait to hear what Charles has to say!

Yes, there is a monitor for the Merlin in development.


- Mikko

Charles,

Just wonder how your trial with the Merlin Vest went on Monday. Anything you can share with us?

Chris will be posting the writeup on this site shortly--stay tuned.

Now online at http://www.dvinfo.net/articles/camsu...linvestarm.php

Thanks Charles, and Chris, a big help as always. Vest sounds great.

And I'm surprised Charlize brought it up... she still owes me dinner. (lol)

Nice review, Thanks CP!

- Mikko

CP,
I was wondering if you could give us some details on the new Flying Brick Cam. Things like how many folks can you take out with one throw? How long will they stay in the prone position ETC. Any price point yet? It looks like someting I'd like to own for certain clients! ;-0

Seriously though, Thanks for the writeup-it looks like a nice piece of gear as usual from the Masters over there.

Don

Great review. As I understand it, there is some kind of upgrde option for the merlin so you can go over the current weight limit? When will these details be available?

Nick:

Various things are being discussed for the Merlin in terms of upgrades or revisions, but it's too early to know what will be an immediate reality, a down-the-road thing or never happen at all. Whatever changes will be relatively incremental, so I wouldn't recommend anyone hold out on their possible purchase as a result.

Turns out I wasn't kidding about chasing her around, we were doing full-on running scenes through an alley. That gal has wheels on her, boy--we were mostly tracking her with the rig on an ATV and the speed was downright hairy. Then I got to body-mount a few shots and she zipped past me like a gazelle.

Tiffen uk showed this at video forum in London over the last 3 days.

As a not hugely experienced Merlin owner struggling with weight induced fatigue i was excited at the news of this product when first highlighted on this board. I had been feeling there was no way forward without an arm/vest system...and as a kit fetishist i guess i 'wanted to need' one too! I suspect im a pretty typical merlin owner, not afraid to buy the best tool for the job, not keen to waste money, not concerned with badge snobbery, not concerned with the bigger rigs but am near the merlin weight limit, probably would have got a sled/arm/vest system instead of the merlin in the first place if it wasnt for the money.

However, having tried a couple of systems now, I am developing new questions and thoughts, which i'll offer up for correction by those more wise.

As has been said before by the really eperienced rig operators, the handheld Merlin is really the ultimate steadycam in terms of freedom and flexibility. Putting a rig on, i instantly realised the truth of this...its a restrictive device that just deals with a weight issue.

The closeness (to me)with which i can operate the merlin handheld gets diminished when it goes on the rig(all rigs i'm sure), maybe thats an inexperience thing, but i certainly felt convinced at least that a monitor was an absolute necessity so it must be budgeted for, along with power, when buying any rig.

Dual arm definately has a booming advantage which adds versatility over single arm, but its only a degree of versatility, not a do all...i can handhold the merlin a full extended arms length above me to start a shot on a fancy ceiling mounted lampshade and boom down past dining table height to finish the shot without hitting a sled on the floor....so before paying for a dual arm, is the booming range of a single arm an issue for your purposes AND is the booming range of a dual arm actually a solution for you?

Dual arm definately has a stability advantage once you start jogging. Again, thats a questions of degrees...i witnessed footage of smooth fast jogging being produced from a lightweight single arm by an operator of average experience. Further reduce the dual arm advantage for lightweight systems and i'm questioning is the degree of superiority at speed/steps sufficient to motivate a dual arm purchase (reference Charles P...his view of the merlin arm....exccerpt: "I took a closer look on my next sprint, and indeed, the reduced mass of this system compared to other rigs did seem to result in a tendency for the whole works to bob around a bit on the end of the arm, not just up and down but laterally as well. I'm not sure if this would show up in the image or not... probably not, as fast moving shots are usually pretty forgiving... but my guess is that you might actually see less of this if you were to forego the arm and vest, and just operate handheld"....please read the whole review, i dont want to be accused of taking anything out of context, especially by someone whose opinion i respect over all others on stabiliser matters).

Ok so now lets not be penny pinching about this...a single arm system might do all i need but a dual arm IS nicer and has SOME greater flexibility and performance so if its a few quid more and im not strapped for cash, maybe thats the way to go. But in the case of the merlin system we dont know the price, but we can bet it will be at a premium on all its competitors. Tiffen uk described the one on demo as a prototype, they couldnt indicate any price level and couldnt say anything about availability beyond 'this year', which is still potentially 10 months!....

So what am i concluding here. Im not rushing to buy a system this week but if i get one in a couple of months and find out the next day the merlin system is available, will i be gutted? Well im unlikely to find ive overspent and im unlikely to find i've missed out on an appreciable performance advantage for lightweight flying.

Have i reached an inaccurate conclusion? With the flyer at $6000, and the cheapest alternative dual arm offering at $2000, the merlin handheld at $800 is anyone prepared to make a case for why the merlin system is going to be less than $3000 ?

Thanks.

Good points Michael. The issue of reduced mobility/range compared to handheld is an interesting one; no other Steadicam is capable of sweeping from ground to over one's head, so it's tough to let that go. The flip side is the reduction of fatigue. I think the nice thing about having the vest and arm is that if you have a shot that requires that range, simply forego the vest and arm; but if the rest of your day's work can be accomodated within the boom parameters of the vest and arm you will walk away less beat up physically (and perhaps having delivered better shots, as fatigue eventually shows up in the stability of the images).

Be advised that when comparing the Merlin arm to other manufacturer's arms, whether single or double, there is a significant performance difference involved due to the isoelastic design of the Steadicam brand arm, which maintains a consistent spring force throughout its range.

It would seem logical that running or jogging would be the most challenging type of shot to compare stabilizers and arms against, but in reality, the amount of peripheral motion going on during such a shot tends to mask many errors (outside of vibration). The true test of a stabilizer's ability to dampen human motion comes when examining a slow-moving walking shot, preferably taken as close to a wall or railing as possible. If there is a tendency to "pogo" up and down a bit (which is quite common in single-section arms, and greatly reduced by the Tiffen iso-elastic arms), it will manifest by making the foreground wall/railing appear to bob up and down (I call this the parallax test). Ironically many people judge stabilizers by the running shots that inevitably appear on the website demos, not realizing that this is less demanding than the above example.

Hi Charles,

As always, thanks for always sharing your wealth of information and thank you for the review.

Can you explain exactly what an iso-elastic arm is? How does it compare to other arm and vest systems in this price range (SmoothShooter, Indicam PILOT, Varizoom, etc)?

Thanks!
Peter

Peter, the basic thrust is that an ideal stabilizer arm acts similarly to the human arm, in that it delivers an equal amount of lifting force throughout the boom range. Our bodies, of course, achieve this by adjusting the muscle tension as needed. Most stabilizer arms use springs connected to fixed points, which means that when you boom all the way in either direction, the springs "want" to return to the median position as soon as you let go. Imagine if your own arm acted this way, it would be disconcerting! Over the years various systems have been devised to create an artificial tension that compensates the spring force as the parallelogram of the arm is articulated throughout its range, which historically involved pulleys and cables attached to the springs. The isoelastic concept that is used in the current generation of Steadicam arms neatly simplifies this process via an angle adjustment. Bottom line is--with most arms in this class, you must apply a significant amount of force to keep the arm boomed down or up to prevent it from settling back to the middle, where it "likes" to be, while the Steadicam arms require nearly no force throughout their range. In effect, they become "invisible". Not only is this more comfortable to operate, the isolation from the operator is increased and the level of the camera is generally more consistent as described above.

An interesting axiom about stabilizers is that while they stabilize the camera in both the angular axes (pan, tilt, roll) and the lateral axes (up/down, left/right, front/back), it is the angular axes that are much more critical in the perceived stability of the shot. In other words, a slight variation in tilt or roll will be immediately detectable, while a bit of vertical deflection is not as obvious as most objects in the frame remain in somewhat similar orientation. It is only when objects are very close to the camera that this bounce is noticeable (and almost gives the illusion that it is the object itself that is moving, as the background stays virtually in the same place, as discussed above). Again, this is why running shots are much more forgiving than slow moving shots with fixed foreground elements.

Thanks for the detailed explanation, Charles! I am so thankful that you are on this board!

So, are you saying that an iso-elastic arm will stay in its vertical spatial position if you placed it there and let go???

In the sled, it is perfectly balanced when you can put the post at any angle and it stays there without effort. If it is unbalanced, the camera will tilt or roll or basically move. Of course, proper operation of the sled is to make the sled slightly bottom heavy so the weights stay on the bottom... :)

So is iso-elasticity the equivalent of a vertical displacement balance? Or did I just totally misunderstand iso-elasticity?

Thanks again for explaining this concept to me,
Peter

A truly isoelastic arm will indeed stay where you put it. However, that can be a little disconcerting to operate, and the arm may not "track" properly (the two sections of the arm lifting at the appropriate rate in unison). The larger Steadicam arms allow one to dial in the appropriate amount of isoelasticity to taste, while the Flyer and Merlin arms have it pre-set. Having less of an isoelastic feel simply means that a certain amount of lifting force is required by the operator, but it turns out that this is more natural for most people and it is still much less than an arm that has no such feature.

The balance of the sled and the action of the arm are two separate systems, so it's probably not worth trying to draw a commonality between them except that they work together to achieve the effect of the stabilizer.

If I had to compare the two actions, I would say that you balance the sled, and you tune the arm. The balance of the sled is minute and absolutely critical, whereas the arm can still function over a wide range of settings, but one tunes it to where one likes it.

So I guess the 'stiction' has been tamed?

Having played with lesser hand-held stabilisers, and with the Merlin (albeit briefly and without any skill in balancing), the miniscule masses involved required a huge amount of zen to guide the camera, and most of the time the camera seemed to know where it wanted to go.

A bit of stiction would seem to be an asset in these circumstances - the 'ideal wetware arm' if you like.

Again, though, we are talking about two different components: stiction in the gimbal will affect the angular axes (and make the camera feel like it has a mind of its own) while the action of the arm has to do with the shock absorbing and vertical travel capabilities. Stiction in the arm will make it feel like a rough ride, but it won't cause the camera to veer off necessarily.

But yes, the original iso-elastic Steadicam arms (Master series) were prone to stiction largely due to the bearings being used. The current generation are beautifully smooth.

brilliant info thanks so much.

i'm obviously too cynical for my own good...reading words like 'isoelastic' as meaningless marketing drivel....but Charles has given it meaning and made clear an absolute distinction in the steadicam brand which all previous threads i'd found hadn't...and mr tiffen uk didnt draw my attention to either. So useful, thanks again.

I have to ask though, have i got this right....steadicam achieved isoelasticity, then provided a means of dialling it out because it wasnt entirely desirable to operators, so in most instances of use they are not isoelastic. Meanwhile steadicam patent what, the term 'isoelastic' or the characteristic?...so other makers can presumably only make (for want of a better term) nearly-but-not-quite-isoelastic arms?

So is there actually only a marginal (isoelasticity)difference in use between steadicam and some of the 'good' others? i could see this as being marginal but of great significance in heavy flying, but surely less so as weight drops.

I bet im coming across as incredibly pedantic!

On the subject of wires and pulleys i'm now wondering if this design is aiming towards isoelasticity?? http://www.floatcam.co.uk/floatcam-showreel.htm

Thanks again.

Reading backwards again i'm thinking my points have already been adressed really so apologies for the above.

I'll be honest with you chaps, I have not been an owner of the Steadicam brand gear for over 10 years now so my knowledge is somewhat peripheral (sort of like what one knows of a Sony camera if you own and use a Panasonic). So there may be slight discrepancies in what I'm saying, technically speaking. Perhaps Mikko can chime in and clarify if I make a boo-boo.

I believe that the principle of isoelasticity as defined by the Steadicam patents deals with the dynamic deflection angle of the spring force as the geometry changes within the arm, which maintains continuous tension. The only other technology that is able to achieve this is the compression spring canister system in use in the PRO arm (and "knockoffs" of same). The trick is finding just the right amount of isoelasticity that the arm feels natural, much in the same way that a slightly bottom heavy rig is more natural to operate (although a few intrepids prefer a more neutral rig, which doesn't work for me at all).

The real bottom line with this is that if one were to analayze the group of freaks and miscreants that are full-time Steadicam operators, an extraordinarily wide range of preferences and operating setups emerge. That is to say, for most videographers who own Betacam-style cameras, for instance, 9 out of 10 will have virtually identical setups, while the same sampling of Steadicam guys will turn up any number of individualized bits and pieces, custom modified parts and fiercely different techniques. I experienced this just today when I was testing out some new gear in the presence of 3 other operators...nearly everything we discussed involved a "really? I don't feel that way at all" or "I've never even considered doing it that way" etc.

So when it comes to isoelasticity, the higher-end arms that allow for adjustment are there to please the individual operator's preferences (imagine a car that is not just either standard or automatic transmission, but could be dialed between the two in increments--now THAT would be heaven!) The lower end rigs do not offer this adjustability simply because that level of operator is less likely to feel the need to tweak, being more accepting of whatever is given to them.

And finally--geez, what a long-winded rant I'm on--having tried both the Glidecam Smooth Shooter and the Flyer (and now the Merlin) setups, I can honestly say that while the GC is a nicely made piece of gear and works fine, there is a substantative performance difference between that and the Steadicam arms--it's not just a hype/brand name/catchphrase mentality...and remember, I don't even own Steadicam gear at the moment.

Heh, thanks for the deferral Charles. No boo-boos in your comments :)

I will however add my highly simplified "version" of the description of Iso-elasticity into this already overlay complicated mix of discussion!

I like the describe the Iso-elastic performance of an arm as how "bouncy" it is.
> A non-Iso-elastic arm will be very bouncy and, as Charles noted, wants to return to it's center point and therefore needs more effort to lift or lower from that neutral point.
> An Iso-elastic arm is less bouncy and pulls to it's neutral position even less. At the extreme it doesn't pull at all, but can in deed remain where you leave it. I've done that with a G-50 arm once. It was amazing, but as Charles notes; also very strange.


-----
And, because I feel this post is too short, now for a bit of the tech behind the arms..

The less tension (strain) a spring is under, the more bouncy it is. The tighter you pull a spring, the less bouncy it seems - as more energy is needed to make changes in tension. You can test this with a rubber band: Pull it tight, and then notice how much less "stretchy" (bouncy) it feels.

With a the springs of a Steadicam type arm at a certain tension, the arm can become Iso-elastic.

> The earlier ("original") Steadicam arms - Up to the Model 3a & EFP arms, where not really "Iso-elastic" arms, as they where pretty bouncy. However when you had them adjusted to maximum payload (by tightening the springs), the arms became almost Iso-elastic. But, as soon as you loosened off the springs to carry less weight, the arms became bouncy again.
The Patent has expired on this original arm design, and this is essentially how every non-Steadicam Brand arm works & performs. - A Glidecam Smooth shooter arm for example should become less bouncy as you load it up with more weight. The same applies to all non-Steadicam arms, including the aforementioned Pro arm.

> The newer Steadicam arms (Starting with the Master/Ultra arm, now including the G-series, Flyer and Merlin arms (and the ProVid/SK arms too)) are built in such a way that instead of changing the tension of the spring to adjust carrying capacity, you instead change the end position of the spring and it's mechanical advantage. As the Spring tension doesn't change, the arm can be built with the spring pre-tuned to a state that provides for Iso-elasticity. THIS is why they are called "Iso-elastic" arms; because they remain turned to be Iso-elastic regardless of the adjustment of carrying capacity.
Steadicam still has active patents on this design, which is why no other manufacturer can offer a "Iso-elastic" arm, that remains Iso-elastic as you adjust it's carrying capacity.

> The G-series of arms takes this all one step further, and combines the systems! You set the arm's carrying capacity ["Lift"] by moving the spring, and then you set the arm's Iso-elasticity (bounciness) ["Ride"] by changing the spring's tension. This is the fine tunability that Charles mentioned that only becomes necessary at higher levels of operating.


Every operator has their own personal preference as to how Iso-elastic they like their arm. Some like it bouncier, some like it almost invisible, most like it somewhere in between. It's all part of the decision when choosing an arm.


Whew, OK, that got a little detailed, but hopefully it clears up some questions about what arms are and aren't Iso-Elastic, and why.

- Mikko

Did we aforemention the Pro arm...? Either way, Mikko, I wouldn't characterize it changing performance based on load--it has a smilar feel whether a given set of canisters are at the strong or weak end of their adjustment range. I find the feel very similar to the G arms, as a matter of fact.

Oop, yeah my bad on that one.
The Pro arm does act differently to most arms.

But it's not paticularly Iso-elastic if I recall? It's been a while since I flew one.

- Mikko