Leaderboard

Stiffness is a function of the OD of the material, and of the ID of the material, and of the material itself. With carbon fiber posts, there are a host of factors affecting stiffens, and stiffness can be quite different form one post to another, even if the first two factors (OD and ID) are identical. I'm sure any post that Greg makes (okay, and the M1 post) are super-stiff and won't give anyone any problems.

Buzz, the plate was originally designed for the XCS sled which has no side to side trim on the top (for those who don't know, the fine trim is done on the bottom - this allows for an incredibly concrete and stable platform at the top to to the camera). Because there is no gearing up top, the camera platform is much lower profile (and lighter) than other sleds so the small height increase of this plate is trivial. Overall, even when using this plate, I find my XCS sled to be very short with any camera build as it was designed to have all the weight at the bottom. As for using this plate in the Wave? Sadly, because of the way the Wave is designed, you have to raise the camera a little to get the CG higher and closer to the nodal point. Betz sells the Wave Rider for this, but it is way too big, heavy and tall. This plate is a good compromise. Furthermore, you need to balance the camera side to side in the Wave and this plate is the easiest way to do that. I like the Wave very much for some applications, but I'd never put a 35mm camera or anything that heavy it it. These cameras have so much inertia anyway, I see much less need for using it.

I'm going to add to Tom's comment about Wave set up. You need to set your preferences for when and how forcefully the Wave kicks in as you tilt. This is not a daily setup, rather a one time thing. I set mine up with the help of Tom and Larry McConkey and have never needed to redo it. As for balancing within the Wave, I use an XCS side-to-side plate (pictured here) to raise the CG of the camera and to balance side-to-side. Super quick and with a little thought on AKS placement, I usually don't even need to add the little weights Tom recommends (although I have them and keep them in the case). The Volt is a fascinating beast and I do believe may end up being the future of Steadicam, but I too had some issues with finessing tilts when I had a loaner for a week. This combined with the fact that they don't have a 2" version of their gimbal or the ability to install it on an XCS gimbal are deal breakers for me. I love the XCS post and gimbal. The very design of the XCS sled is great for the Wave as the weight distribution puts all the weight at the bottom of the sled allowing one to use the Wave without a long post. Its also worth noting that the Ultimate 2 is four pounds lighter than an M1 which also happens to be the weight of a Wave.

I've been holding off on saying much, as I know many who've gone the Volt route who I don't want to discourage, but I've had a very different experience than many with the Volt and the Wave. My experience with the Volt was that while it did offer some immediate advantages over the Wave (like its size and weight, and also the added bonus of having a rig that is neutrally balanced and thus can be moved around without any pendulum effects), it significantly changed my operating, and not for the better. I do a lot of tilting in my operating (something I wasn't aware of until I switched to the Volt), and the M1V electronics altered the way tilt felt, which required a lot of retraining, and additionally, I always saw a little pan wobble at the beginning and ends of tilts, no matter how much I turned the tilt strength down. There was also the issue (that I'm hoping eventually gets fixed) of the M1V tilting on a diagonal, and not in a straight vertical line, amongst a few other things that I found over my year and a half with the device. The work I did with the Volt was simply not as clean or good as the work I could do with the Wave, so I have since moved back to the Wave and sold my Volt. I urge each operator who is moving towards any augmented stabilization technology to try using both (and make sure they are both set up correctly, as many do not balance the Wave correctly), and see what they prefer, and most importantly, to analyze the footage critically.