Re: How much do you use your glidecam?
 

Noa how do you find the blackbird to rebalance once you put a light on your camera - the merlin takes me a good few minutes of faffing!

Re: How much do you use your glidecam?
 

I have not added anything during a shoot that would need be to re-balance, but I can say that taking the blackbird out of it's case, assemble it and getting it balanced is done very quickly, I have not timed it yet but might this weekend. :)

Re: How much do you use your glidecam?
 

Noa, we need less than 2 secs ok.... Just kidding, take 4. :}

Re: How much do you use your glidecam?
 

I have a generic glidecam, and can use it really effectively if I have the time to set it up. Unfortunately, I never use it at weddings because I'm a solo shooter and time is at a premium. Plus, the warp stabilizer in AE is so good that I can fake glidecam shots very well.

Re: How much do you use your glidecam?
 

Hi Pete
Any weight added to a rig will throw off the balance, even something as simple as putting on a smaller battery! If you do outdoor/indoor shoots with different camera setups then it might be an idea to do two balances, one with a light and one without and then make a note of the balance change by just marking the new balance setup by putting some file marks on your QR plate.

The fact that you are adding weight to the top of the cam will not only alter the front back and side to side balance but will also lift your centre of gravity so adding a light means a new camera position plus additional weights to pull the centre of balance back down to where it originally was which should be directly at the gimbal. If you mark the new cam position and know what extra weight to add it should be easy to re-set the rig for night use

Chris

Re: How much do you use your glidecam?
 

I am a solo shooter as well, the blackbird steadicam has a resting stand, if you are done flying you just flip open that stand and place the Blackbird on the floor or on a table, the biggest advantage is you can place it down where-ever you want, it's a very simple but unique feature.

I only use the steadicam starting from the reception at the venue, the first part of the day is much travel, going in and out of locations and I already have enough to carry with me, that's why I don't use a slider either before the reception at the venue as I like to travel light.

Once at the reception the blackbird has not slowed me down, it just sits there where I last left it which is usually nearby waiting to be used, when I"m shooting on a tripod with my other camera and something happens that would benefit from a steadicam shot it's just a matter of picking it up, close the resting stand, switch the power button on the dslr on, adjust the focus and start shooting, that's all a matter of a few seconds.

Any kind of software solution you might try to mimic steadicam moves with a handheld camera is never a substitute for the real thing, especially for longer shots,like following the couple during their first entrance into the venue, or circling them during the first dance.

The day my blackbird would be damaged a order for a new one would be placed immediately, I use it as a selling point and my clients expect these kind of gliding shots to be in their video..

Re: How much do you use your glidecam?
 

Noa did you have no additional light for those evening shots? (If you did i'm guessing off-camera then) also i love that music - who is it?

Pete

Re: How much do you use your glidecam?
 

No, never use any light on or off camera, the music is from cameronmusic.co.uk, songname is: in the grounds of hogwarts

Re: How much do you use your glidecam?
 

So is that your CX730? (I'm guessing not the EA50) - Nice images for such low light!

Re: How much do you use your glidecam?
 

If you are refering to that video in the venue, that was mostly canon 550d shots with a 14mm f2.8 lens, didn't have my nex-ea50 back then.

Re: How much do you use your glidecam?
 

It works great for me, haha.

Re: How much do you use your glidecam?
 

Now this is a true steadicam hero!!! a 96 minute feature film shot in one steadicam take (apparently)


Pete

Re: How much do you use your glidecam?
 

You have made me curious, can you show such a fake gildecam shot stabilized in AE?

Re: How much do you use your glidecam?
 

I don't have any of my shots online, but here's an example of what it's capable of. With the right tweaking it can be really great.

Re: How much do you use your glidecam?
 

Edius has a build in stabilizer which works great to filter out micro shakes but in case of removing larger shakes it deforms the image in the process, it's hard to explain but you see the background "twist".

AE seems to be doing a much better job but I still see the image "twisting" but not so noticeable, you do get some resolution loss as it needs to zoom in on the image to have correction space. I have seen some stabilizing tutorials on Andrew Kramer's video co-pilot site and eventhough the results are great it seems a very time consuming job, Also the example you gave is a basic move with no pan or tilt changes but I'd like to see how a shot would look like following the couple during their first entrance while they are making constant direction changes, I can imagine that would take a lot of time getting that right.

With a steadicam you just shoot, slam it on the timeline and get on with the editing :)

Re: How much do you use your glidecam?
 

Anyone thought about using one of the MOVI type devices? Obviously the MOVI is expensive, but there are cheaper alternatives and the prices will probably continue to come down. May be a nice way to get smooth shots.

Re: How much do you use your glidecam?
 

the warp thing is handy to have ok, only downside to it is it wont allow you to change it to slomo or anything, so you'd have to render it off and re-import it if you wanted to add anything else on it.