Peter Hoare

Oh that is very similar isnt it. Oh well, back to the drawing board. I will out innovate you!! :lol:

I have already thought of the spring thing ;-) Might vary it a bit then, I dont like copying people. Gotta be innovative with stuff like this. :lol:

So this is my current thought. The blue part is a bolted down support, so you can slide it up and down easily. The black part is the clamp, it will have a thumb wheel thing on top. The green plate is 4mm thick and the IDX plate will bolt to this. Should be sturdy and will loosten off with half a turn and slide up and down nice and securely and tighten up quickly. What do we think?

Hi, Ive been asked to do a few Wedicam shots at a very flamboyant wedding, and I have been told that there will be some rice throwing going on during part of the ceremony. Im assuming they mean uncooked rice, but im wondering if this could cause a problem for my arm or any other parts, should any bit of rice get inside? Its a Flyer (older one). Should I try and protect the arm somehow, or will this not cause a problem? Thanks a lot, Pete.

Hi Rick, not spoken in a while, hows it going? We will measure Eds rig with a CMM machine, capable of accuracy up to three microns. Even a layer of grease on the rods will affect the reading, so we dont have an accuracy issue unless Ed has bent his rods up badly. We can always take the rods out and measure the channels the rods run through. Should be fine unless every archer is different, which I find hard to believe. It could be that one of your rods was slightly bent outwards so the reading came out wrong? Tiffen have told me 50mm between centres, so im going to go with this figure, and design this as an open clamp to compensate. Possibly two open hook shapes on either side with a claw clamp to lock it in or something creative and nice to look at. If anyone needs anything else just let me know, We can literally make anything, you should see some of the parts this company make for F1 cars, real works of art some of them. Pete.

Hi Matteo, Well we can get a plate with a tap plug on it. If you really want I could probably machine a pocket and set a lemo connector into it for power output. Once I have an archer in hand I will design the bits, make one to check it works, post some photos and then you can say if you want one or not. Once I get the archer infront of me, probably will take a week to get a prototype done, and then depending on how many people want, will take a few days to get the rest made up. The machine runs overnight so we can load it up and go home come back next day with them all finished. Clever eh? What colour do you want? ha.

Mm not quite home made, these brackets will be made on a quarter of a million pound CNC machine thats taking a break from cutting out parts out of titanium for F1 cars. The tolerance on the Hoare Archer Bracket is +/- 3 microns :-D Just helping out the steadicam community with my contacts, anyone needs anything else making, let me know. We can make pretty much anything. Pete.

Hi Sebastian, It depends entirely on the complexity and the numbers we make. Looking online, the actual battery plate is a bit more expensive than I first thought, but the actual bracket (minus the plate) should be 3-4 aluminium parts. Depends entirely how many we do. If we make 2-3 it will be a lot more than making 10. Once I can see Eds rig I will draw something up and see what the machine shop can do for us. Thanks, Pete.

Cool ok, well when Ed comes with his Archer, il design something and get it machined. Tiffen quoted the rod distance as 50mm too which is odd... but oh well.

Hmm, Odd. I have heard from Tiffen that the rods are 15.4mm in diameter. Maybe I can give it abit more space just in case.... Strange that two archers dont fit the same....

Hi, Im meeting up with an Archer owner this week to design a second battery mount to go on the bottom of the sled to help balancing. The plan so far is an aluminium plate with two clamps for the rods on the sled with an an IDX V mount. The plan is to get these CNC cut and anodised so Im wondering if any other archer owners out there would like to jump on the bandwagon and take one of these as well? Im not interested in making any profit on this, Its a simple peice to design and my local machine shop will wire them out for me, but obviously the more we make, the cheaper they will be. If anyone would be interested then let me know and I can get some prices sorted out. Thanks, Pete.

No pain no gain, No socks no shoes, No hair, no haircut. :lol:

I find that operating on a sandy beach is hard enough without being drunk as well...

Ha, this is how I want my wedding....

Hahaha, look at the way this guy wears his vest: Link

Hi, I built a bar that clamps onto the camera rods that holds a standard gym weight on either side. I use two 1.25kg plates for small cams, Z1 sized etc. Works well, and it helps to triangulate the whasit thingy, and gives a stabilising effect, similar to antlers. All it took was a few bits of steel and some bolts... Pete.

Well I guess you have the option now. Maybe the pull apart arm is something to do with service, easier to replace just one dodgy section rather than the whole thing for a quick solution in the event of a problem. Also would go in a small peli case in two parts, and it might have some manufacturing/assembly/shipping advantages. My Flyer arm behaves like a dead fish when I pack it away, would be nice to have to parts that didn't flop about all over the place...

I am aware that I first mentioned the P word, I tried to edit the post and change this as soon as I clicked submit. We usually photograph industrial estates and golf courses, we were only there because sky wanted a feed from us, we dont usually do it. We are far from being paparazzi. We did see some proper papps the day before, all fighting over who had which spot. There was also a pap fight (known as a bumfight) during the funeral, we heard all about it over the radios from the sky gallery.

The burial was supposed to be private, the funeral was public and we were covering for Sky News who had the deal to televise it. We did not do any photography at the burial, those aerial photographs you saw must have been from a helicopter. The funeral was a public event, they had huge screens relaying the service to thousands outside, you can hardly say that photographing that is immoral, its just the same as any news story. In any case, our photos are wide landscapes, showing the church and the crowd, and we did not go there to invade privacy or expose a celebritys secret, what we do is high up aerial photos, we are not paparazzi.

You know me ed, always up for a building challenge. I was thinking of something electronic with sensors and sliding weights... :-D

Ok thanks a lot for the help. The mast is pneumatic so if you pull down on it with too much force it just compresses the air a little bit more. Maybe some kind of sliding weight system that compensates for the wobble. Sounds like a challenge. Thanks, Pete.

Mm yes I suppose, I was just hoping that spreading the weight would stop it swaying too much. True paparazzis are pretty bad, but the stuff we do isnt so bad. For a start we arnt in peoples faces, the photos we take usualy show a huge area rather than some poor celebrity sneezing or something. Its not like we are following people home from the Ivy and photographing them putting the rubbish out. In any case, I just rig the mast ;-)

Hi, I have recently started doing aerial mast photography for corporate, TV and press. I was at the Jade Goodie funeral yesterday, had a feed to sky one and we were doing papparazzi from 90ft up with a Canon 5D. One problem though, the mast wobbles a lot in the wind, which made me think that some antlers would help. The weight ontop of the mast is about 10kg (head and camera) Just wondering if theres any kind of mathematical calculation or any basic rule which dictates the weight or size of the antlers? I can either stick them up at the top or afew feet down from the top or wherever necessary. Capacity of the mast is 20kg, so we have about 10kg extra in the budget for some antlers. You think antlers would help? Thanks a lot for any input, Pete.

I met Howard at the BSC show a few weeks ago, and whilst im not in the market for a new rig right now, I am still intending to upsize my gear in the nearish future. I spoke to a nice lady (Rachel I think?) who said I should talk to Howard about the AR. When he did turn up, he was very rude and abrupt, and kept starting up convosations with passers-by to avoid talking to me. I know im fairly young and inexperienced compared to most of you, but I still represent a potential customer. Or at least I did. Even if the AR is revolutionary id rather not buy it of someone who treated me this way. In the end I gave up trying to find out more about the rig and just wandered off, knowing I would never own any MK-V stuff....

They have just done a limited edition RED easyrig, and I had a go on one yesterday (infact the ONLY one in the UK at the moment). At first it felt quite uncomfortable, the weight of the camera levering forward pulled back on the strap, which did nothing for 'personal aesthetics' It was definatly easier than shouldering the camera without it though. I think if I had the time to get used to it, I would probably feel the benefit. One problem with the easy rig though, you do look absolutely ridiculous.