Monday, January 10, 2005

Building the Steadicam and other oddball inventions

The steadicam, but first I should mention I have no intention of editing. I read my post from last night and at first was aware and the gross amount of spell and grammer errors I made. Friends, countrymen I apologize but it has to be this way. Hopefully, you will get the gist of my journey without me focusing to much time on grammer check. So on with the steadi cam.

For those of you who don't know what a steadicam shot is. It is when a person wants a shot of someone walking down the hallway and they follow and the camera floats either by thier feet or head or moves from the feet to the head. There are many other reasons to use a steadicam; getting a POV(point of view) shot of someone running but you dont want the jumpy documentary look. Essentially it helps steadi your cam. You can buy one online for 1600 bucks or if you are cheap and broke like me you can go online and figure out how to build a dumbed down version that works pretty darn close to the 1600 dollar ones. How do I know. I dont I read articles from several people who have tried it.
In my searching I came across this site http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/steadycam/ that gives you a basic steadicam set up for just under 15$ this was the beginning of a model I am working on. Mine costs a bit more but is better fit for bigger cameras and is easier to put together but is essentially the same thing.
Supplies
2 1/2" galvanized Floor Flanges
1 1/2" Malleable Coupling *for outside extension
1 1/2" Tee
2 1/2" Black end caps
2 1/2" x 18" pipe
1 1/2" by 10" black pipe *for outside extension
My friend is working on building a mount for the camera but really all it will be is a piece of wood with cork on each side and with the correct thread count mounting bolt screwed thru the bottom. The wood will then be secured by four bolts onto one of the Flanges that attatches to the Pipe. This cost, oh and a 3lb and 5lb wieght donated by a friend. The cost at Lowes came to 17$ with out the wood or the corkboard but really it cant be much more.
So anyway it went together with ease and that is saying something coming from me I have a panic attack when I have to change the oil and involves more then paying someone 20$ to do it for me. I will test it out this weekend and report back.

Other tricks I will be messing with will be the Wheelchair Dolly. That should be fun. Oh another friend of mine did donate the use of a wheelchair he has access to for my cause.

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