This steadicam should have came with an instructor

Friday, April 17, 2009

Written by: Jed

Buying a Steadicam for a pocket camcorder probably seems counter intuitive (mostly because it is); but if you’ve ever seen the shaky footage from any of these cameras, it makes some sense.

Steadicams are expensive, especially for a casual consumer. The Merlin, from the sounds of it is the holy grail of the Steadicam world. But even I couldn’t justify a $1000 purchase for a $200 Kodak Zi6 (not to mention my personal economic recession). Then there’s the HAGUE Mini Motion-Cam Stabilizer. The forums seem to like this product as far as consumer grade steadicams go. The videos of it at work sold me.  But although a bit more reasonable at around $150 shipped (plus unknown custom charges); I still couldn’t justify it. So really, out of necessity I went for the Manfrotto Modosteady. Test footage on YouTube and Vimeo seemed decent enough. Granted its reception seems to be universally underwhelming – but at $80, I guess you do get what you pay for. It has three featured settings; tripod; shoulder support; and stabilizer. And it does two of the three just fine, it’s just too bad that this steadicam suffers with the stabilizing part.

Maybe it has to do with the fact I’m trying to stabilize a camera lacking a built-in stabilizer? But if that were the case, I probably wouldn’t have bought one. It could be a weight issue? But most if not all of the complaints seem to blame its inability to support heavier cameras (but maybe that applies to the other end of the scale as well). Or maybe it’s just me? From reading around, concensus seems to be that being able to use any steadicam properly takes a lot of practice. I should have had that in mind when I decided to first use it on a family vacation in California/Nevada earlier this year. The end result, little to no watchable footage. Ironically the only decent clip I brought back was that of the Dancing Fountains of the Bellagio, which I recorded without the ModoSteady.

With a trip to Florida at the end of the month, I have a couple of weeks to put in some needed practice. And after a couple of days of playing with the device, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that it’s (I’m) a lost cause. I’ll continue to give it an honest effort, but part of me is starting to wonder whether it’s even worth the time. I have to remind myself that I’m doing all of this for getting optimal footage with a cheap pocket camcorder. I guess I could have avoided all of these issues by putting the $300 I ended up spending, on a real camera – it may not fit in my pocket, but it’s not like the ModoSteady does that either.