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Tips on slow creeps


Kevin Kisling

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Hey friends!

Been practicing slow creeps and I wanted to see if anyone has tips/advice for them overall, handgrip, arm tuning, walking, etc... Sometimes I feel like I see a micro pan and then my correction. Wanted to check in with the hive mind to learn and improve.

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Hi Kevin,

What rig and arm are you working with?

Everyone has their way of doing things. Try this.

Super light touch with your operating hand when keeping your frame. If the rig is balanced correctly trust that it will stay that way with out you overcompensating with your operating hand. Arm hand can be as firm as you like. 

Footsteps should roll. Not flat feet of course. I operate regular. Walking forward I tend to have very short strides. Rolling from my left heel to my toe and then onto the outside of my right foot rolling onto my right heel. Then back to my left foot and so on. Backwards, it is simply rolling from my toes to my heels. 

Harder to explain than to physically show this sort of thing. I hope what I wrote is clear. If not, please let me know.

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The micro-panning side to side may be your hand. Or it may be something in the centering and set of your gimbal.
As Kat said, what rig- and specifically what sled/ gimbal are you flying?

To find out if it's your hand or the rig making the micro-panning motions, start a normal walking shot and after a few steps, completely remove your sled hand. The rig should remain aimed where you last aimed it. If it starts shimmying side to side, you will know you have a hardware issue.

Let us know what you find !

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Thanks for the help! Master sled and Master arm. I am trying with a lighter touch, different hand positions etc... as well as the heel to toe and toe to heal. I think both are helping and require more practice and experimentation. I also did a more normal walk and removed my hand and didn't see any micro adjustments. I am also doing a roughly 3 second drop time. 

Thanks for the advice and taking time out of your day to help! I'll follow up after more practice.

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On 6/1/2020 at 8:45 PM, PeterAbraham said:

The micro-panning side to side may be your hand. Or it may be something in the centering and set of your gimbal.
As Kat said, what rig- and specifically what sled/ gimbal are you flying?

To find out if it's your hand or the rig making the micro-panning motions, start a normal walking shot and after a few steps, completely remove your sled hand. The rig should remain aimed where you last aimed it. If it starts shimmying side to side, you will know you have a hardware issue.

Let us know what you find !

Hey Peter,

I wanted to pick your brain a bit more about the micro-panning Kevin wrote about. I sometimes feel I have that problem. I realized it happens most when I put a lot of weight down the middle of the sled instead of spreading the weight between the monitor and the battery side. Also, if it was a hardware issue, is it something in the centering of the gimbal? And how would I fix it? Thanks in advance. 

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I'd be so glad to fly down to the island to work on-site.....  ;)

Logical that you'd feel rocking when inertia the bottom is reduced. Spreading out the weight tends to suppress any rocking. It's very similar to balancing the rig. The faster the drop-time, the more minimized any off-balanced issues are to your fingers because the mass of the pendulum has been increased top to bottom, and the rig is holding itself upright rather aggressively. ( A 1 second drop opposed to a 3 second drop, for example )

I am a HUGE fan of taking an extra 2 minutes when doing a build to build the rig and then set the gimbal to neutral. Zero G, as I call it. Then very carefully arrange both axis so that the system is perfectly balanced. Even a slow drop time is using bottom-heaviness to overcome elements that are trying to pull the rig to one side or another.

Only way to know if your build is perfectly centered is to trim fore/aft and side/side while neutral. Then, ASSUMING your gimbal itself is centered, your rig can and will behave exactly like a planetarium machine. You can tip it upside down and to an extreme axis- and it should hang there immobile. Any slow roll or sway is then easier to locate. I used to do it at workshops I taught. If there's a rolling or tilting that you cannot pin down to errant loose cables or trim, then cast your eyes to your gimbal itself.

A useful bit to engage in every single time you build. It MUST be done out of the wind, of course. Any breeze will push a rig that's at neutral around.

As to the issue of how to center your gimbal, there are written guides out there depending on which gimbal you are using. Glad to help you with this- but better to get those already well-proven guides into your hands. Which gimbal is it?

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Regarding the panning: If you've done the "hand-free" test and the rig pans, it may be that the pan bearing is sticky and needs a good cleaning. Or, alas, replacing.

If the "hand-free" test shows no panning, then it's likely a combination of lack of pan inertia (typical of small sleds) and heavy-handedness, both of which are easily fixed, as described above.

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On 9/7/2020 at 9:11 AM, PeterAbraham said:

I'd be so glad to fly down to the island to work on-site.....  ;)

Logical that you'd feel rocking when inertia the bottom is reduced. Spreading out the weight tends to suppress any rocking. It's very similar to balancing the rig. The faster the drop-time, the more minimized any off-balanced issues are to your fingers because the mass of the pendulum has been increased top to bottom, and the rig is holding itself upright rather aggressively. ( A 1 second drop opposed to a 3 second drop, for example )

I am a HUGE fan of taking an extra 2 minutes when doing a build to build the rig and then set the gimbal to neutral. Zero G, as I call it. Then very carefully arrange both axis so that the system is perfectly balanced. Even a slow drop time is using bottom-heaviness to overcome elements that are trying to pull the rig to one side or another.

Only way to know if your build is perfectly centered is to trim fore/aft and side/side while neutral. Then, ASSUMING your gimbal itself is centered, your rig can and will behave exactly like a planetarium machine. You can tip it upside down and to an extreme axis- and it should hang there immobile. Any slow roll or sway is then easier to locate. I used to do it at workshops I taught. If there's a rolling or tilting that you cannot pin down to errant loose cables or trim, then cast your eyes to your gimbal itself.

A useful bit to engage in every single time you build. It MUST be done out of the wind, of course. Any breeze will push a rig that's at neutral around.

As to the issue of how to center your gimbal, there are written guides out there depending on which gimbal you are using. Glad to help you with this- but better to get those already well-proven guides into your hands. Which gimbal is it?

Hi Peter,

I would be very interested to find the guides you mentioned in this topic. 

Any chance you could point me to the right direction?

Cheers! 

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