DIY film making Equipment and other assorted goodies
Wednesday 1 June 2011
Sunday 1 May 2011
DIY shoulder rig
After making the DIY Steadicam I decided to move onto making a shoulder rig. I wanted one but even cheap rigs are out of my price range. I wanted a full rig and so buying just a cheap shoulder mount which held the camera and nothing else wasn’t really an option. So I decided to make my own, I had a look at the bought rigs and thought ‘how hard can it be?’…
a few examples..
After doing a lot of research into other DIY Shoulder Rigs I came up with sort of a design.
I liked this DIY matte box in a youtube tutorial and so made this first.
Work in progress shot. Matte box made out of MDF held together with PVA glue. It’s designed to fit round my largest lens which is a Samyang 14mm 2.8 which is huge!
I followed the Youtube tutorial pretty closely and ended up with this matte box.
At this point I had also added the rails which was the bases for my rig. After looking at a lot of other DIY rigs this seemed to be the best way of making a rig.
The hardest part was finding some way of attaching the 2 rods together and creating a base to add the different modules to the rig.
There are a lot of good tutorials but this seems to be an area where they all have trouble with. There was one where someone used clamps that are designed to keep car engine pipes tidy which is a very nice solution but in the end I found what I needed in an iron mongers. A u shaped piece of metal for gate bolts and a metal bracket that fitted together provided what I needed and where versatile enough that I can base all of the modules on this design.
shown here the nearly finished matte box along with rails and rail clamps.
The rails are aluminium tubes, I chose this because it’s light and relatively easy to bend into the shaped handles but it’s also stiff enough and with all the rail clamps in place it will be plenty rigid.
This is the rig with the finished matte box, first attempt at a follow focus, shoulder rest, counter weight and carrying handle. 
I bought a Huco gearbox but had a lot of trouble getting gears to use for it, i got these ones from a local maplin but they didn’t work at all, this version was an attempt at a belt driven follow focus.
The follow focus was by far the biggest pain in the ass while making this rig, i went through several designs and redesigns before making something that worked including the Helicopter gear focus ring
This is a brilliant idea and worked really well for lens gears but the problem is the teeth are really small and I couldn’t find a suitable gear for the gearbox.
In the end i went with a friction follow focus, first making a skate wheel style one and then moving on to an Ikan style one using bane bot wheels, this is the follow focus i am currently using and seems to be working really well.
Couple of points to note however, it works much better with manual lenses due to the larger focus throw and i had some trouble with the cannon 1.2 50 and 1.2 85 as the focus rubber grip tended to slip a bit, this isn’t too much of a concern for however as I was borrowing them and can in no way afford them, problem solved. It does however work very well on my Samyang 14mm 2.8 shown in the picture bellow
After several tests with the carry handle as it was proved it to be annoying and impractical I had to change it. Originally it only had one bracket holding it up but it was very flimsy so i had to add another one but this just got in the way. I was adamant that I wanted the handle so I had to rethink the problem, I shortened the handle bracket length to give it less flex and remounted them at the front and back of the handle both on one side. This had the desired effect and now it is sturdy and practical. The handle is balanced so when you hold the camera is steady, this works well for moving low shots. The handle brackets are also going to double up as mounts for audio equipment.
The shoulder rest under the handle is also balanced with the weight being slightly forward, this takes a lot of weight off your arms. I was suprised when i used a friends rig that seems to be quite popular at the moment
It was incredibly uncomfortable to use, all the weight is on the front so you are constantly holding it up and there is a support which rests on your ribs which seems to be designed for minimal comfort, also when you are filming your breathing moves the camera up and down if you chose to use the rib spike.
Although the counter weight makes the rig overall heavier the weight distribution it allows creates a much more comfortable to use rig and also allows the balanced handle.
The shoulder padding was made from a builders knee pad with the hard plastic cap taken off, these are great as shoulder pad rests as they are already in a perfect shape, I bent a thin piece of aluminium round it for support.
I wanted the design to be quite stylish, which is why I used wood and aluminium. Eventually when I have ironed out all the kinks I will spray the modules black leaving the rails as brushed aluminium.
Wood works well for the handles, it’s nice to hold and light. The wooden handles were attached with a dowel plug drilled into the wood and slotted in the aluminium tube. At first I tried using various glues for this but none of them would dry properly so I eventually used wood filler. This worked surprisingly well, filling in any gaps that would allow movement and holding the handles in fast.
The matte box works well but could do with a filter tray, this will probably be my next step for this DIY rig. I have also been toying with the idea of adding hinged extensions for the matte box but so far I haven’t had any trouble with flaring.
The handle brackets are the same ones used for the rest of the rig on he modules but just bent at 45 degree angles, losing the extra bracket that was in the middle removed a lot of the bounce problem. In this picture you can also see the fence bolt U’s more clearly.
In the end i settled with an Ikan style follow focus which is working really well. I do however need to make a sturdier mount for it. Currently it is attached with a piece of aluminium with a strip cut out the middle so it can be adjusted but the aluminium is quite flimsy so it needs something a bit sturdier to mount on.
To mount the camera i settled on a macro slider, I had seen in another DIY rig tutorial that someone had used one and it seemed like a great solution, it was cheap (about £14) and created the adjustment ability my rig needed to line the focus wheel with the lens focus grip. I got mine off ebay from Hong Kong, cheap but took about a month to arrive.
Detail of how the handle and counter weight are attached to the rig and held together.
The Gate bolt U’s where slightly too big for the aluminium rails so each one has a strip of rubber lining it, this creates a very rigid hold but means the rig is not easily adjustable. This however is not a problem, once the rig is set up it doesn’t need to be adjusted except for where the macro slider allows it to.
The macro slider has a knob for moving it backwards and forwards and also another one to lock it in position, so far I have had no trouble with this.
For the follow focus I used the Huco gear box which can be a bit of a pain to get hold of and bane bot wheels. The biggest problem I had with this was attaching the bane bot wheel hubs to the gear box axle. The axle being smooth meant that no matter how tight I did the fixing screw on the wheel hub it kept slipping, in the end i drilled into the axle so the screw had something to sit in and used a liberal amount of araldite which seems to be working.
Detail of the underneath. The metal brackets i used for all the modules weren’t counter sunk so i used washers that the tip of the bolts could sit in to improve the overall look of the rig.
Saturday 30 April 2011
Some Streampunk Trinkets
Had a request to post more steampunk stuff I have made so here it is
The Design of the Widow in regards to Filigree and cogs is influenced by steampunk and also an offshoot of the jewellery i have been making of late.
Friday 29 April 2011
Les Arcs Snowboarding Video
I had intended to use my DIY Steadicam for this video but it was bad enough carrying around my 60D all over the mountain on my snowboard without carrying the steadicam too.
Thursday 28 April 2011
DIY Steadicam final design
EXTREEEMLY STEADY TOM CAM 5 TO THE 25th
HOW STEADY IS STEADY? TURBO STEADY TECHNOLOGY KICKS YOU IN THE FACE WITH STEADINESS, EXTREEEM STEADY. STEADIER THAN A BOMB DISPOSAL EXPERT PLAYING OPERATION AGAINST A BRAIN SURGEON
So after some trials with my DIY Steadicam I’m now confident it’s finished, for now.
I had to make a few modifications after each test to resolve new problems that emerged each time.
One thing i was previously unhappy was the attachment between the universal joint and the threaded bar. After Santa gave me some new metal drill bits i was able to drill through the universal joint and bar to bolt them together, this has stopped the slip that was occurring due to it only being glued. I will be looking for a Universal joint to replace the one i am currently using however as it just doesn’t feel very sturdy. Picture bellow showing universal joint and bolts holding the steadicam together
After the first test shoot it became apparent the rig was too flexible which created bounce in the video so i went about stiffening the whole design. The join between the bracket and the bike mount part was originally two rivets side by side but this allowed movement so i added a third larger rivet bellow the previous two to stiffen the join. The steadicam suffers a lot less from bounce here now.
another problem creating bounce was the fact that the camera was attached to the main body of the steadicam by only one bolt mounted quite far forward, this created a spring like movement on the camera so i added another bracket and bolted it to the back of the adjustable plate to remove any movement arising from the join to the main body. Much of the DIY process has been learning as I go.
the two brackets didnt quite meet up so i had to drill new holes for the 4 bolts holding the two brackets together.
another addition i added previously was a slip ring that controls pan. I also replaced the handle with one length of pvc pipe, the previous handle made from a table top tripod kept slipping in its join and off balancing the steadicam.
Detail of the Adjustment mechanism, it had to perform 2 functions, move with millimetre precision and lock firm in place, as it stands it is for-filling both roles
The Aluminium frame is made from the rest of the tri pod i took the baseplate from. I removed the legs and cut them to size, cut joints into them and riveted them for strength.
All the areas which are attached to threaded rod have locking washers on to minimize any movement ruining footage.
The weighting system involves long threaded bar so the weights can be moved up and down for fine tuning and also a heavy weight with a large centre hole enabling it to be weighted to either side to counter tilt on the camera
The camera screws directly to the base plate so it cant be easily removed, the plate must be moved right over to allow access which means the steadicam must be re balanced each time a camera is moved. This is a problem i hope to overcome in the future.
Quite a challenging part of the build was machining out the runners for the adjustable mount, i went through 4 grinding disks on my dremel doing this!
Wednesday 27 April 2011
Steadicam Mrk2
So after my first steady cam looked like a pile of shit i decided to make another one based on the Merlin design which would no doubt now look awesome after my years of steadicam making experience. So onto research, here’s what Yoda has to say about steadicams, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” which as i can now see with powerful hindsight is why my first attempt to build the death star failed.
So here’s some merlin style steadicams other people have made
The one common element and the biggest pain in the ass from the previous project is the gimbal joint which is replaced in these models with a universal joint instead.So with no real design in mind i bought a universal joint from a hobby shop and set out to make one.
using some left over pvc pipe from my previous project i attached it to the top of an old desktop tripod and jammed a skate bearing in with some bolts to keep it in place, leaving some thread poking out to attach the universal joint to.
i wasnt too sure how to attach the universal joint so i just glued it hoping that the due to all the weight of the steadicam being on that point will be enough to keep it in place.
i cut down a bolt to be used for the bit that attaches the top of the universal joint to the rest of the steadicam, but this ended up not working, plans are for fools.
the main thing letting my previous steadicam down was the inability to adjust the cameras centre of balance so I started prototyping a way of being able to adjust the cameras position. The camera mount needs to be able to move on 2 axes of movement. My first design used pin holes which the base plate can move along on and be pined in place. This method isn’t too great due to only being able to move 1cm a time when 1mm can off balance the cam.
the main body of the steadicam is a mounting bracket for bikes or some shit and the other bit of metal which attaches the bike mount to the base plate is a joist bracket. I drilled and riveted these together so they are sturdy and strong like mother Russia.
This is the two halves combined to make a whole, you then use the hole to escape the room. The adjustable base plate seems to be pretty good at adjusting. It is starting to look like a steadicam.
Detail showing the universal joint and the backwards wayi attached the adjustable splange to the rest of the steadicam.
detail of the sketchy way the baseplate is attached to the adjustable doodah, at the moment it is held in place with un-riveted rivets but will be replaced with bolts.
I sprayed the steadicam curvy bit black to give it a low radar signature
different angles of the steadicam as it stands. It still needs counter weights on the curvy bit and a better way of adjusting the base plate
The curvy bit with bolts added for the counter weights, i kept them long so the weights can be moved closer to or further away from the main frame to adjust ballance.
i started on a new adjustment system for the baseplate which will allow the millimetre presision it needs, the base plate has been screwed to two aluminium tubes drilled through 90 degrees to allow y axis movement.
the rails for the baseplate are threaded poles which are cut to length.
details of the new adjustable baseplate, it can now move as precisely as it needs to. Visible also just under the universal joint is a polished disk i added which allows you to control the pan of the camera smoothly, it being polished lets it slips with a soft grip keeping the movement smooth.
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