Ryan Wiebe

No help on balancing, but another issue - what about the relatively huge monitor cable and AC? Your prompter looks like mine, from Prompter People, and either of those cables, going out to the monitor, will be hellacious to deal with.

 

How about using a 7" monitor over the camera, receiving a wireless video prompter feed?

Yes, I know....cables was my next obstacle! I know that there is a battery pack for the monitor (although that adds more weight). I think we have to have the teleprompter over the lens because if it was slightly above the lens the talent might look weird looking up. We are doing a news-style shoot.

I am trying to attach a lightweight teleprompter to the flyer, here is the breakdown:

Sony Z1U with battery - 5lb 2.4 oz

Teleprompter screen - 2lb 7.1 oz

Teleprompter glass - 1lb 3.6 oz

Teleprompter cover - 3lb 0.3 oz

Teleprompter base - 2lb 3.7 oz

That is a total of about 14lbs

It is too front heavy, I have moved the gimbal all the way to the top and moved the teleprompter and camera back as far as it can go. I used both of my IDX batteries at the bottom of the post and even wrapped a 2lb weight around the batteries (which brings the weight up a little) and it is still front-heavy. I put a photo below. Any ideas? Or is this just too much for the Flyer? If so, any ideas on a Teleprompter that does work with the Flyer?

Thanks,

Ryan

What camera are you using? Most video cameras have a setting somewhere in the menus that will output a crosshair on the monitor out if you want. You can usually toggle the amount of other info on screen off and just leave the crosshair.

I am using a Sony Z1U HDV Camera. It does have a crosshair display. However, it will not output to the Stedicam monitor, only to the flip-out LCD on the Camera which I cannot see very well while using the Steadicam.

You would need a frameliner for that. As an aside I hate crosshairs

Actually, I hate crosshairs also, but I just needed a reference to practice keeping it straight while I am learning.

Thanks for responding everybody, I will put these suggestions to use.

When I got the Flyer, I noticed that it doesn't have crosshairs or any type of on-screen display. Does anyone have any ideas? I don't want to mess up the LCD screen with tape or anything else.

Thanks,

Ryan