Glidecam Smooth Shooter + Glidecam 2000 Pro
For all you people that don't have the time and resources to build yourself a good steadycam with a vest and all.. check out the new stabilizing system from Glidecam, Glidecam Smooth Shooter and Glidecam 2000Pro!
Introduction
I haven't used it very much yet... Mostly testing it.. I filmed some stuff at a club, as seen above (although I wasn't filming at the time of that photo, I'm holding it all wrong:), but quickly realized that it's very hard to film with this equipment unless the people being filmed is aware of it. It's kinda big so people got to clear the way! :)
The Glidecam 2000 Pro
My first reactions to the system is that the glidecam itself is really cool, with the gimbal and all.. I tried building the "$14 steadycam", and even made one with a homemade gimbal.. But never got any good results..
What I never realized is that the balancing of the system is CRITICAL! Just running around with a T-shaped stick doesn't stabilise very much..
After hours of balancing, and rebalancing you can do really cool things with the Glidecam 2000 Pro. You surely can build something like this pretty easily, but make sure you can balance everything in all directions, it does make a huge difference! Just by moving the camera 0.1mm to the side, it changes!
It's cool when you move your hand with the glidecam from the left to the right quick.. it's sooo smooooth :)
The Glidecam seems like really good, solid quality, and there was a good documentation and balancing manual. I've equipped it with a manfrotto 323 quick release as seen in the picture which is compatible to my tripod.. Very nice to be able to move it back and forth without the need to rebalance it every time..
The Glidecam Smooth Shooter Vest
And now to the Smooth Shooter, which consists of a vest and an arm. Not much to say about the vest, it's good to wear, nice comfort. On the front of the vest I've attached the 4" LCD (Glidecam L4-PRO) instead of on the bottom of the Glidecam which seems to be a more usual position.
I think it's easier to have the screen in a fixed position rather than it moving with the camera.. It's hard/impossible to see the screen if you film sideways.. right? This also means that you don't need to rebalance the system in case you adjust the screen.. So I think this works good, except that it's i little hard to look forward and on the screen at the same time sometimes.. :)
The Glidecam Smooth Shooter Arm
The arm is nice, with two springs inside, which can be removed depending on the weight of your camera+glidecam. After a week or so the little metal pins in each joint seemed to be a little loose, so I had to check it out, and I could pretty easily pull them out, which is not good, cause the arm fell apart :). But i assembled it again and found out that there are a teeny-weeny-tiny little screw on each joint that needs to be tightened. I didn't have a tool this tiny to tighten it, so i used a 6 mm torx and got a pretty good grip, so i think it'll hold. I also put some duct tape just to be sure. Don't want this to fall apart while shooting! :)
The package
There was a huge amount of weight plates, screws, nuts and other stuff in the package. And a lot was left over when I was done, so I got a little worried, but it's a package that is used for other Glidecam products so all wasn't needed :)
And I bought this from...
Getting a hold of the system wasn't very easy. Of course I wanted it as soon as possible and contacted all the european dealers and got different replies. Glidecam Usa set a releasedate somewhere in march. The one that delivered to me was Horst Herzog at AF Marcotec Germany (http://www.marcotec-germany.de -
sales@marcotec-germany.de).
Marcotec gave me very good service and answered all questions quickly and the deliveries via UPS was very fast and cheap. There was a screw missing in the package, and they sent it to me for free via UPS and I got it within a few days.
Price?
When I ordered it, I payed €2130 + €50 for the Manfrotto quick release. But it looks like the price has gone up a bit. But if you contact Horst Herzog (sales@marcotec-germany.de) and say you got the word from Niclas, Sweden, maybe he'll give you a little discount :)
Conclusion
Although I haven't mastered the art of steadycam operation yet, I find this to be a very cool product, at a reasonable price. Not for the ultra low budget, but not as expensive as the bigger systems are.
What suprised me a bit, was that it's pretty heavy, and it's good to have a strong back if you're doing this for a long period of time! I can't understand how the "real steadycam operators" can carry those huge cameras!
Another thing I haven't figured out yet is how much weight I should use. Does it get much more stable with A LOT more weight? Cause it's good that it's not too heavy, but still it must be stable..
There was a nice DVD along with the glidecam 2000 pro describing how to balance and use it and also demonstration of the bigger products. Very nice!
The manual for the Smooth Shooter was kinda bad, especially the paging, but it seems like they made the product before making the manual, and a new manual should probably be available from their website soon.
And now.. for the sample video!
Not an amazing video, just our first tests with it and a little suprise in the end ;)
About 1 minute, 11Mb filesize:
http://nicmar.mirror.krayon.net/ss_demo_1.mpg
Images of me wearing it at the event arranged by Gods Kitchen. I know, i don't look as good as that blonde chick in the Glidecam ads ;)
http://nicmar.mirror.krayon.net/glidecam1.jpg
http://nicmar.mirror.krayon.net/glidecam2.jpg
I'd be happy to get some comments on this review!
Good luck with the stable shooting! :)
-nicmar
