So, I'm not allowed to do any work in the garage that involves flying debris for a week or so and I have a new Flip video camera on the way. A coworker did a walkaround video of a customer's car with a Flip the other day and it's a masterpiece of shakycam.
So I decided to make my own steadicam. Because I could. It's basically a setup that appeared in Make magazine a while back, but with the addition of manly tools like a welder and appropriately sized wrenches instead of adjustable pipe wrenches and bolts. Total cost was about $15, and it could have been cheaper if I'd used black pipe instead of galvy. Didn't feel like getting my hands dirty every time I touched it though.
The pipes, caps and tee are 12" sections of 1/2" galvanized pipe from Home Depot. I drilled a 1/4" hole in the top and stuck a 1 1/2" long, 1/4" coarse bolt through it, held on by a nut and with the bulk of the bolt threads left exposed. There's a fender washer backed by a wing nut on the end of the bolt. 1/4" coarse is standard tripod mount thread. Camera screws on to the bolt, wing nut tightens it down. I could have used a shorter bolt, I might cut it down.
The base is a 7 lb chunk of steel with a black pipe union sloppily welded to it. The handles are some extra mountain bike grips I had handy.
Test video with my crappycam (possibly the only video camera that takes shakier video with the image stabilization on than with it off) showed a dramatic difference in smoothness on a quick test. Big thumbs up, definitely worth the massive investment of time and money.
The only problem was that it only took about 15 minutes to build, and I had the rest of the day to kill. Sigh...
A little more limited in camera movement (you don't have any control on the angle of the camera) but I can see how it would work really well.
