Steadicam for Super8

Cahit Tomruk · January 29, 2012

Has anyone tried using steadicam with Super8.

There are some nice options like this

some of which are relatively cheap for someone to experiment with.

has anyone tried any similar solutions for stabilized shooting?

Geoff Howell · January 29, 2012

here's a nice clip of someone with a ZC1000 mounted on a steady-cam.

Will Montgomery · January 30, 2012

Can be a little tricky depending on the camera. You need a camera that will run without having to hold a trigger or setup a cable release to run the camera.

Dom Jaeger · January 30, 2012

Has anyone tried using steadicam with Super8.

There are some nice options like this

some of which are relatively cheap for someone to experiment with.

has anyone tried any similar solutions for stabilized shooting?

I've made my own (primitive) steadicam rig similar to the one pictured for Regular 8 cameras using a rod-end as a gimbal, attached to an adjustable base plate. A curved length of flat aluminium rod with a brass weight on the end serves as the stabilizer.

It works quite well for my purposes, but it can wear out my arm after a while.

Another option is to use a steering wheel form weighted at the bottom, with the camera mounted within. I have yet to try that design, but I imagine using both arms would make it less work, and because with these lightweight systems your arm acts as the suspension, two arms might be more stable.

As Will mentioned, you would generally need to run the camera remotely by cable. Some of the removeable handgrips for R8 cameras (such as the Nizo pistol grips) activate the camera by cable and are ideal, attached under the gimbal.

The biggest issue is that you can't really use the viewfinder anymore, so you either point and hope for the best (which works surprisingly well actually) or rig up some kind of video assist. I tried a mobile phone camera taped over the eyepiece, which was fiddly, and only sort-of worked. If you have the know-how (and some spare cash) a small CCD in the viewfinder feeding to a mini-monitor would do the trick.

Matt Stevens · January 30, 2012

For handheld stuff I tend to stick a Canon S95 on top of the camera, mounted with the hot-shoe (both my prior R10 and current 1014 XL-S have one) and then line up the LCD from the S95 with approximately what the camera's lens is seeing. It's impossible to be spot on, of course, but since I always want to frame for 1.66:1, if I go a tad to high or low, it's fine as I adjust the framing of each shot in editing.

andy oliver · January 31, 2012

here is my rig using the 'merlin'. I run the camera via a canon remote switch 60 using lightweight flex connected to the camera. The remote switch is operated using my teeth!!!!!!! Originally tried the cable remote, but this waisted film and at times unbalanced the rig whislt fumbling to operate the thing.