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Steadicam Pilot experience


RobVanGelder

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After 3 days of using a Steadicam Pilot with an EX-3, I must say that I was very impressed with the overall performance of this little lightweight rig.

This camera puts it on the maximum possible payload, certainly with the original Sony wide angle.

But the arm worked flawlessly, cranked all the way up but in the best operating position (a bit, 5-10 degrees below horizontal) it did not hit any limits.

 

This was a shooting with martial arts pro's, kicking and fighting and turning around each other and then I around them.

That was so much fun, because with this little rig and camera I can achieve a much higher speed and acceleration then with any other full size rig.

The quality of stabilization and the gimbal is certainly at the same level as high-end rigs. Combine that with the really very impressive quality of the EX-3 and it gives you very rewarding, high speed and agile shots.

 

Certainly there are problems, but what can you expect for the money.

Heavier and longer lasting batteries are hardly possible: the arm is at its max. I will look into LiPo (A123 cells) to make this better.

The LCD is underpowered for sure, specially in Thai sunlight. It eats 10 Duracellls in less then 2 hours too.

 

But the whole rig is so lightweight and still performs very well. Easy to adjust when flipping into lowmode (upside down), slide in the post for 5cm/2" , pull the LCD forward and adjust a bit on the fore-aft/left right, within 40 seconds or less and without taking it off the arm you are shooting again.

 

The martial arts fighter were also very happy with the results, they had not seen such high velocity shots before, due to the effortless handling of this rig.

I found myself wearing it for more then 1,5 hour without noticing.

 

Very nice!

 

Now I will take it home (it's not mine) to make it a bit more operator-friendly on some minor points.

 

I can see more coming out of this rig, specially with the new line of DSLR cameras. Things that we were not able to do before, because of size and weight and therefore speed, location and physical restrictions.

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