Glidecam balancing and fluidhead tripod on the cheap

Balancing a glidecam can be frustrating. The purpose of the glidecam allows you, as a camera opperator, to move your body without significantly affecting the steadiness of the shot you are filming. More specifically it keeps the shot uniformly level. Said another way, been the lack of shaking at the amount of consistent level, your shots look like they come from a dolly (I will toss some video up soon to demonstrate.)

Getting the sucker (your camera) to balance on the thing (the glidecam device) has been, so far, a hit and miss process. The magic of the whole thing is a combination of the plate the camera sits on, which can move forward, backward, left and right, and the counter-weights at the bottom of the device, which can move closer to the vertical pole and further away. If you have a camera with a heavy piece of expensive piece of glass on it (like a canon XL1 or greater) then you might want those counter weights far to the outside away from the vertical pole. In my case, I have the XH-A1 and while that is heavier than say, the GL1, putting the weights somewhere about an inch from the pole works for me.

It is really the adjustable plate that the camera sits on that is the fidgety part. You set the whole contraption down and make a few tweaks and then pick it up only to realize that it isn't ballanced only to do through this a few hundred more times until you get it right. Well, I think I have figured out the quickest way to make this process happen.

The real problem in the balancing work flow is the fact that you cannot easily adjust the camera plate or weights while holding the camera in the air. Here is the solution.

I just realized that the bottom of the handle of my glidecam pro 2000 is open. The handle is basically like an open tube at the bottom. This is by design so that it can be mounted onto another more expensive additionally stabilizing device. Then I realized that if I took the head off of my vertical microphone stand I could put the vertical end of the microphone stand into the open tube end of the glidecam handle.

Wowser! The glidecam is positioned above one of the outwardly stabilizing legs at the bottom of the mic stand and it hangs there perfectly well without tipping over.

Now I can easily start adjusting the camera plate and within a few adjustments I can see that the camera is now balanced both forward and back, left and right. ba-da-BING!

On to the topic of fluid head tripods.

In some cases people just walk a simple tracking shot of someone walking up a street and then the camera pans to follow them as they walk past and on down the street. If you don't have a fluid head tripod (which costs at least $300) then your shot ends up looking jerky and unpleasant. Here is a simple way to get that shot if you have a glidecam.

Put your glidecam back on the mic stand, and all you have to wory about now is pivoting the vertical pole, which sits fluidly on bearings and will give you the shot you are looking for without the hundreds of dollars of investment.

Obviously the one unfortunate problem is that you can't then lock down the camera and start pulling focus or something. But you can do other fun things, like slipping the glidecam handle up and off the mic stand to suddenly start following your shot!

Ah, what fun. If you have other ideas, feel free to append them here.