Homemade camcorder shoulder/pistol grip stabilizer
The other day I reviewed the recent 40 minute short I made and I noticed that there were a lot of mobile shots that seemed a bit shaky. To prevent this from happening in my next upcoming films, I decided to make a homemade camcorder stabilizer. Part of my inspiration to do this was looking at Eugenia's shoulder bracket from the HV20 picture thread. I looked at the price and was not impressed at all, so I thought to myself, why not make one? So I just went to my local hardware store and found a bunch of pipes, screws, a spring, and I happened to have some cushioning thingy's I got from my work and put it together with a friend within two hours. Here is how it turned out:
The handling takes a little getting used to because of the extra weight, but once I played around with it quite a bit, it turned out to be more comfortable than I thought. There is still a little bit of shock while walking but it is barely noticeable when I looked at some test footage (I wish I could show ya'll but my computer is way to crappy to render anything right now) Overall, I love what I did with $20 dollars and I will be looking forward to shooting some scenes for my next film!
Headphone wires go into the end of the tubing of the pipe.
Shoulder padding. Not THE MOST comfortable stabilizer in the world but it does the job.
Where the camcorder mounts on. I can shake it all I want, flip it, and the camcorder still won't fall off.
Soft cushioned handle for support. Gorilla glue: best super glue on the planet. If you're too lazy to screw anything in like methan I recommend Gorilla Glue. The only thing I actually used to screw in was a drill bit through the pipe, so that the screw thingy (haha forgot what kind of screw it's called) can go through the pipe and the blue mount thingy (don't know what that is either, just picked it off the shelf) for the camcorder to mount on.
I used the wireless remote controller that came along with the camcorder and strapped it onto the spring/handle. The reason why I did this is because I want to be able to press the zoom button from the controller while maintaining my stability with both of my hands at the same time. Instead of having to release my hand from the handle and reaching for the built in zoom toggle that could risk the stabilizer not being stable! In conclusion, I'm glad Canon gave us HV20 owners a remote controller that I thought was useless!
If you have any questions on how I built this rig, feel free to shoot. This idea kind of came out of no where, and I am not a genius at building stuff. That is why I had a friend help me out. So I will try to answer your questions as best as possible. Thanks.
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Once I get a new computer, hopefully in the near future, I will put some footage on there. I can tell you first hand, that it is working pretty well for me thus far. I was a bit skeptical at first because I thought it would produce a lot of noise and shock while walking, but it handled very smoothly and silently at the same time. It even doesn't look half bad while running.
Originally Posted by drexebo
