David Preutz

I think I might have cracked this. Although, one thing I would say is that the GH1 with a 14mm pancake on only comes in at 480 grms. meaning very little weight is required to balance thing up, so the whole rig is very light & does tend to sway a bit. Probably not aided by my inexperience. However, balancing the rig up with other heavier lenses has proved far more satisfactory (Body & lenses ranging in combined weight from 815 to 1000 grms.) Therefore, it seems to me adding something to bulk up the body & pancake weight would improve things considerably. Any ideas out there what to add? A aluminium tripod plate ain't that heavy and, I would imaging one doesn't want to raise the camera's CG too much.

Hello All I've been through the dvd, manual & user cookbook settings a number of times and seem to be reasonably close but, no cigar yet:-)). However, I appear to be miles away from any user cookbook settings on my GH1 &, although I'm getting a slow drop time it still seems to be very pendulummy. The user settings I've tried seem to be way off. Perhaps I'm way off in my understanding & handling. My Settings:- GH1 with 14mm pancake: weighs 500g. Front= finish: Bottom= finish & start: Mount Hole= H: Platform= -0.25 Caliper distance = 230mm: Z turns -7 from closed although -8 gives it a lovely slow drop. Presumably the idea is to be carrying the least amount of weights required to balance the camera to zero & then fine trim to get level, then fine tune Z to get the drop? Does it seem to someone more knowledgable, that I do not have enough mass (ie weights) on the Merlin to give it some sort of bulk to steady it a bit? I look forward to hearing back from you & cracking it. Many thanks David