Camera Stabilizers Epic, All Kinds of Ways to Steady Your Camera

all right today we're going to be talking about ways to stabilize the camera to keep it from jittering and jerking around i'm going to show you all the different ways from really cheap to really expensive and yes i'm going to be giving most of this stuff away by the end of the video but first i'm going to talk about stabilizing itself because people think there's some misconceptions they think that the ibis the in-camera stabilizing systems are going to be so good soon that you're not going to need any of this stuff that you don't need gimbals or any of the physical things let's start with a little brief explanation of stabilizing now the lens is going to focus light onto a sensor a flat plane so the sensor is going to get a picture that picture is basically a two-dimensional image what people think is going to happen is the stabilizer because you're jerking around like this right well they think that the sensor is going to move to compensate for that the way that the camera does that is it has to crop in so here's your sensor it has to crop in and then it has to move that around within that space it needs room to work with so when it does this it's actually you're cutting off a lot of the resolution you're getting in tighter you're losing your wide angles and you're losing resolution now this only works for two-dimensional images which is not really going to work for a lot of situations because the world out there is three-dimensional so let me show you that so here's here's a scene right we've got some mountains a tree it's landscape and here's you right so we think of an image in a movie camera or a still camera being like this it's just an image and it's just moving around the camera is going to stabilize it but that's not the case because you are separate from the background so as you're moving around you're moving in 3d space so notice how this is moving separate from this and as this moves you're going to be hiding and revealing certain parts of the background now the camera has no idea what's behind you and unless it has another way of seeing through you it's not going to know what to put in the place to stabilize this and that's the trick now unless you have the only way to make that possible is if the camera has multiple lenses if there's like four lenses uh two for up and down and two for left and right then it can see around the side and interpolate that and that's gonna that's basically like having four cameras with four sensors packed into one and that's really expensive and this processing speeds to be able to do that just don't exist so for now you're going to need these mechanical things to make this move separate from this because otherwise what the i what your your software is going to do is either stabilize the background and this moves around or this is stable and the background moves but if you're moving in 3d space up and down there's no way to make both go at the same time unless you use one of these things so i i hope that kind of explained a little bit the stabilizing principles now the only way to really have a really good stabilizing where everything is nice and smooth is if the camera itself stays in position and you might be jerking a bit but the camera stays really well and it doesn't go up and down for now there's different kinds of motion one last thing here people think stabilizing motion is just like this that's a flat plane but it also goes forward and back and up and down now here's a one type of motion here's another type of motion here's a type of motion and here's a type of motion now what the camera can fix is this we're on the flat plane and maybe a little bit of this or this but it has a really hard time if you're walking and the thing is going up and down or left and right that's where these things come in and using 120 frames per second to smooth out motion doesn't work when someone's talking all right so let's start with the most basic stabilizing method of all and that is just holding the camera in your hand just walking around and being really stable it is possible with enough practice to be able to learn how to walk and stabilize yourself without moving the camera very much and there actually are people who do that there's a guy who has a channel mark bone he only uses a camera in his hand and sometimes he uses a handle like this this is a handle and he just attaches it on top of the camera and you walk around the heavier the camera the more stable it is the lighter the camera the easier it is to jiggle having a handle mounted on top of your camera is the first cheapest way to stabilize a camera another way is to just cup it with the bottom hand and walk around like this so that's the cheapest way of all and if with practice you can get really good at this now i know everybody wants to have something where they just attach to something push the on button it instantly locks the camera and makes it really stable and i think that's what these things do the gimbals to some degree but there's still some issues with that i'll get to that in a minute so here's the first step these handles that you put on top they they go for it's called a top handle there's different versions of them you get them for like 25 bucks i'll put the links down below so the next step up from that is this thing here this is uh this is an x grip uh it's a really lightweight plasticky thing that you stick your camera onto and you can walk it like this you know or you can turn the camera like that which is you know it's different ways of doing it so whatever it is you're doing you know you could walk with this like which is kind of cool i mean that's one way of doing it this thing is 15 bucks it costs almost nothing that's kind of cool here's the next step up from that this is the velo action pan pro vb2000 it costs 30 dollars and you can hold it with two hands so now you can go like this and you can make it fly like you know how little kids go with airplanes you can fly it around like that um so this is kind of cool very lightweight it weighs nothing it weighs it was very very lightweight 30 bucks for this thing the next step up is a revo sr 1000 you put it on your shoulder 89 at b h uh this is kind of what the news guys used to use when they went around town to shoot the news and they have a big video camera on their head on your shoulders and you walk and this is good because you can put your eyepiece there to look at it now the problem with this is as you're walking your shoulder activity is going to transfer through into this but it helps stabilize and helps the weight a little bit it just helps in some areas it doesn't make it totally smooth but it helps a little bit it's the next step up from having nothing the next step up from that this one's kind of cool this is a dslr rig it's only 35 dollars it's by neewer and it it moves in so many directions and there's so many this everything about this like you can turn the handles in a million different ways it's so um versatile to use for so many things but the general idea is just like the uh the previous one i showed you you put this on your shoulder like this this is the most basic way and you stabilize it like that and of course you can make the handles like this that's another way to do it or you could just take this bottom thing out completely you could collapse these in and then just use the handle like that there's so many ways you can configure this thing it's just so fun to play with nothing else it's just fun even though this is on your shoulder if you walk it's still going to bounce up and down this is not really a stabilizing device very much as it is something that just makes it easier to work the camera this does not take the shake out of you still have to learn to walk properly and move the camera properly so that's the dslr rig 35 dollars lightweight it's kind of fun and the next one up from that is it's called a spider stabilizer this one's kind of cool now we're starting to use uh weights and balances and things like that this is flat the handles are flexible you can use your thumb on here to actually push it up or you know turn it if you want to go up or down and this is a little bit more versatile than the previous one they showed you because it's using the weight of the camera to balance and it's a little bit smoother and you adjust it and that's kind of cool i got it from china it's 95 which is pretty cheap for what this is no motors no gimbals no i mean it has gimbals but there's no motorized gyros in this this is all just weights and things which is kind of cool that's the cool thing all right now we move up to the last of the mechanical ones and that is this this is the standard main one that most people use it takes some getting used to but the idea is you balance the camera perfectly with the counterweights down here and if it's balanced properly and you have a gimbal here and you you move it you keep it whatever you want to aim it at with this hand here and then you can move the camera in whichever direction and the camera aims it doesn't move at all the camera just stays looking in the direction that you want and you can turn it easily by just of course you have to keep it balanced like that this is actually a good one this is the fly cam red king i suggest this one if this is the way you want to go instead of just unlocking the base plate and manually sliding and jerking in and locking it in hoping it works there's a knob on the back and an optimal side you just turn the knob and it makes the camera go back back back back back or forward forward forward and there's another knob on the side you turn makes the camera go sideways so you can really dial in the weights perfectly this thing here also goes up and down the gimbal you put the right position in there and then these weights can go up and down the higher up it goes the less weight on the bottom you have and then you add weights down here most people think you have to have the exact amount of weight of the camera on the plate stumble you really don't you can have less weight down here and then you just make this longer which adds more weight according to the camera the way you balance these things i'm just giving you a real quick course so it's leaning forward a little bit now i remember oh it's got the lens cap on lens cap makes a big difference on the weights so you take the lens cap off now it's starting to lean to the back that's how much weight the lens cap has so now you turn this dial until it's that's about good all right so now you have this and the way you you counter balance the top and the bottom is you hold it sideways and you count two and a half seconds before it gets into this position so you go like this 1001 1002 there that's perfect so that's the right amount of distance up and down in here to get it balanced right once you got it dialed in you know again you can have your motion this is the best way to physically stabilize something without any motors or gyros it's very popular it's this is the red king fly cam by proem it's 230 dollars i highly recommend this if you're going to go the manual route this stabilizes better than all of these things and this is what you attach to that the steadicam this is the uh the main part of the steadicam that does the stabilizing i'll get all to that in a minute anyway so this is uh the last of the manual mechanical stabilizers now we're going to get to the motorized electrical ones these are handheld gyros you put your camera in here and it has xyz motors that stabilize it you have to balance it properly i'm not going to show you how to do it but basically you have to balance the camera this way this way in this way and then the motors take over and hold it steady unlike other people which nitpick these things apart which was this one better than this one you know what they're almost all pretty much the same maybe 50 more 100 more or less one might weigh a little bit more or whatever but really they're all kind of the same if you know how to use them i'm sure you've already seen a million videos about these online i've got three different models here i've got the phi fyutech ak 4 400. i've got the zhiyun crane 2 which is 450 and then i have the ronin sc made by dgi i like this one because this one is smaller very well made very good quality a lot of features and it's the cheapest one it's only 350. so i highly recommend now if you're gonna go this route the ronin sc it's the smallest of the bunch the best made of the bunch and the thing about the ronin sc is uh if you hook up a cell phone on top of your camera it can actually track your motions i'll get into that in the next video on tracking this one's about stabilizing and the fiutec ak-4000 also has an optional two-handed grip here it's a carbon fiber grip um it costs 190 dollars i'm going to turn it on the thing is you take the handle off the bottom of this and you put it in you incorporate it into this handle this is where the the electronics and the batteries are and it goes the the wires go through here and talks to this thing so i'm going to turn it on okay it's on now and now it's got a little lcd screen here that you can change for whatever mode you want and now you can do smooth motions up and down so if you're using the carbon fiber handle and the ak-4000 together it's about six hundred dollars for the whole set and it's pretty good i mean it works all right personally from my experience having the two handle thing doesn't really make it smoother than just having the single-handed one especially if you know what you're doing but you know you're having two hands hold it instead of one so you're cutting the weight that you're holding your weight bearing is now split up over two hands instead of one hand just holding it and getting all jerky and and worn down so so that's something to consider all right so now we have that these are the motorized ones and it's it's not i mean it does help you turn it on and it makes it smoother but it's still not going to make it perfectly locked in smooth because you're still if you're walking if this is going up and down while you're walking this cannot compensate for this it can compensate for that that that a little bit of this not much in a little bit of this but mainly the rotating on the axis stuff is what these things stabilize all right and this is the next step up from this this is a two handled version and i like this one this is a ronin dgi what is it m this is a ronin-m this one i like the best out of the motorized ones i think it actually is a lot more stable than these and i'm going to turn it on for a second here oh it wants to go that way okay so it's on so now you can do really smooth motions with this thing i like this one out of all the motorized ones this is the one i like the most so this is the ronin m it's a two handle gimbal stabilizer it goes for eight hundred dollars and i really like it it's one of my favorite ones this is the one that i use for hanging off of that one now we're talking about professional steadicams this is the professional steadicam system uh basis that hollywood has been using for many years so the way this works is this is the support system and this is the studying system and this goes on a pin so this is the final system here like this now contrary to popular belief this is not for steadying this does not really steady anything the purpose of this right here is to take the weight of this off your arms in hollywood those cameras are huge they're heavy and they're big and they have monitors and big batteries and i think a normal person probably couldn't hold it for more than 30 seconds without shaking like crazy anyway so this thing here the whole purpose of this is to support the weight of the steadying contraption so this is how it works and really what makes things steady more than anything else is the weight of the camera the weight of the gear everybody thinks this does the studying it doesn't the reason the hollywood shots are so steady is because they use these big giant heavy cameras with big heavy gear and monitors and batteries you can take a little tiny object and shake it really easily really quickly but if you go up to an ocean liner and you push on it it's not going anywhere because the bigger something is the more it wants to stay where it is because of all the heavy weights called inertia momentum heavy things want to stay where they are so it's a lot easier to have smooth motion with heavier objects a car is actually a really good stabilizing system anyway so what does the stabilizing more than anything is the heavy weight of a camera and this just does the support so you can use this all day long and not have your arms get tired so that's really what this is for and the stuff the real quote-unquote city camp the brand steadicam they go up to like the price of a house like a quarter million dollars for those things the newer ones have gyros on them and and stabilize motors and everything um but the basic ones for the first 20 30 years they made steady cams it was just counterweights that's all it is which is what this is this system here with the arm the vest and the flycam red king isn't really that expensive at all the vest itself the flycam galaxy is only 385 dollars that's with the arm only 385 dollars that's less than the price of most little handheld gimbals the fly cam red king is only 230 dollars so for six seven hundred dollars you got yourself a professional steadicam now i know it's big and awkward and everything but if you're gonna be doing stuff all day long and your cameras are heavier and bigger this is something to consider and you gotta adjust the springs for how heavy the camera is so anyway so this is this system here oh and one word of caution if you have one of these things when you take this off and this arm is free be real careful because it swings around like really easily it could whack you in the head or whack someone else in the head be really careful now the arm comes out like this but it still swings around this thing is dangerous and it's real heavy and it's hard so be careful if you have one of these be real careful of that now this one keep supports the weight from below this one supports the weight from above all right this one here is called the fly cam flow line by pro aim with a placid spring head this costs about eight hundred dollars the last one i showed you it supports from underneath but with an arm this one supports from above which is what i use more of because i do recipe videos and i have to fly the camera just an inch above the countertop so this is more fitting for what i do for people who follow people around walking maybe the other one is more fitting so it depends what you use it for would be determining which one is more right for you anyway so you hang your camera from here and again this thing is just like the other one is not designed to steady the camera all this does is it's designed to take the weight off your arms so your arms don't get tired holding something that's all this is it's just a holding device to keep the weight off you if you walk it's still it still goes up and down so you need something on here that stabilizes so that's where i use the ronin m so it has a clamp on here that you then clamp on the handle so now you have your gyroscopic gimbal dangling from a wire above your head my arms don't even have to do anything but they're there to guide it so i'm going to turn this on there so now i can concentrate on my energy on where to aim the camera and just doing you know more creative stuff rather than spending all my energy having to hold this thing up my arms go get tired all day you know after a while your arms get tired and start shaking my arms are all i'm doing with my arms just aiming the camera i can do this with one finger if i wanted to so this is a lot easier for if you're filming all day long now again if you're walking you know when you're walking you're going up and down so see the whole thing is going up and down all this can do is stabilize this way but it cannot stable this spring might help a little bit but again you got to learn how to walk properly heel to toe heel to toe barely moving as you're barely not you know to minimize the up and down motion so again just because you've got this big fancy device with all these gizmos and motors and everything you're still gonna get some shake if you're if you don't learn how to walk properly you still have to be a proper operator this does not answer all your problems but it does take a lot of the weight off your arms and this helps stabilize from that three axis right on the sensor so now you can do some nice smooth motions this is one of my favorite setups for doing kitchen recipe videos because this thing can now float inches above the surface of the countertop and there's nothing underneath i can lean over top of table tops and do and and i can aim it down and i can aim it up nice smooth motions all right so again the ronin-m is eight hundred dollars and the fly cam flow line with the plastic flow head is eight hundred dollars so this is a sixteen hundred dollar setup here but for what i do in the kitchen videos other than using a actual jib arm motorized jib arm i think this is for hand holding the best smoothest thing for what i do now everybody's different everybody does different things if you're following people walking around you could use this but maybe the uh the actual steadicam the the galaxy one is better for you so again it's for each zone the way to take this off you just push this lever here and it comes off that easy and then you just put this on the stand the thing about these big things here is my arms already getting tired just holding this like this that's what these things are for so i don't have to hold this with my arm the thing about these big things are i mean it's pretty obvious it's awkward there's big putting it on and off is not that easy so there is a downside to it i like small lightweight things but something if you're going to be doing videos for hours and hours this might be something to consider everybody thinks these things are going to make your life easier it's going to make things smoother they really don't the reason i'm not showing you what the movements are like with each one of these recording a video is because if you just took one of these things and you walked around with it it's going to be kind of jerky you're going to see the footsteps every time you hit the ground even if you're walking heel to toe like you're supposed to do you're still going to see some of this you got it it takes practice even with the real steadicam it takes practice it takes weeks or months to really get it down to really get good at it so none of these are going to give you perfect smooth motion the real trick is how heavy is the camera and how practiced are you doing it it takes a lot of practice to get it to be really smooth so that's kind of something you got to realize you're not going to get smooth motion by taking out the box pushing the on button instantly everything's wonderful you need to practice you need to really work at it and over time over months and months you will learn how to walk how to move your body how to do everything this is not instant stuff so i don't need all this stuff it's too big it's too heavy tdb is just too damn big so i like small lightweight things and i'd like to play with stuff i like to see what that what it's like see what all the hype is and so i'm just going to give most of it away because i just don't need all of it i really don't i just like to know what it's like so here's what i'm going to give away all right and the way we're going to do it go to marcuspixfreebees.com to see the rules you can't have won anything in the last six months pick one of these pick one that you want do not send in multiple entries anybody who does that who sends me an entry for this and this and this is disqualified pick one and hope you win all right don't complicate life for me so here's the ones i'm giving away i'm giving away all the top handles i'm giving away the x grip the velo action pro the revo the dslr rig the spider stabilizer the fyutech the whole thing the the carbon fiber grip plus the ak-4000 which you can take out and use if you take this out it'll look like this so it's it's a set i'm giving that away as a set i'm giving away the zhiyun crane 2 i'm keeping the ronin sc and i'm giving away the red king fly cam plus the galaxy as a set this is a steadicam set i am keeping the flow line and i'm keeping the ronin sc basically that's what and i'm keeping the ronin m so i'm keeping this one this one and the ronin sc everything else i'm giving away because i'm a nice guy i want to share the joy of photography some people can't afford this stuff so i'm passing it off because that's the right thing to do so stay i'm going to announce that we're going to announce the winners in the next video we're going to give you a few days to pick which one you want send in your entry again pick one thing now most people are going to want the expensive stuff keep that in mind you're going to be competing against everybody if you don't if this i mean come on this is overkill for most people if you're using a little tiny camera this is ridiculous i mean don't go for the big stuff just because it's big and expensive go for what realistically you think is best for your scenario most of you have small little cameras and you're not doing big expensive things so go for something that's on your level plus the more expensive stuff more people are going to ask for it so the chances are if you pick one of the cheaper things you'll be less people asking for it and more chances of you getting it and cara will also be picking the winner of her camera in the next video so i hope this uh my photography channel inspires you because that's what it's all about sharing the joy photography that's all i'm about and i try to show you everything that has to do with supporting the camera lighting i'm going to get an audio series soon um filmmaking still photography i just love it that's what i'm about i worked in hollywood for 20 years and i'm sharing with you everything i've learned and i like to experiment and tinker i'm rambling i don't want to make this too long so i'll see you in the next video tell your friends about markups fix mark marcus fix i'll see you next video okay [Music] bye you

Channel: MarkusPix

Views: 67,848

Keywords: camera stabilizers, gimbal, camera gimbal, top handle, DSLR rig, spider stabilizer, Feiyutech, Feiyutech AK4000, Zhiyun crane 2, DJI Ronin, Ronin M, carbon fiber, dual handle, flycam redking, proaim flycam, flycam galaxy, placid spring, camera stabilizer, gimbal stabilizer, video stabilizer, dslr stabilizer, best camera support stabilizer, body mounted stabilizer, zhiyun crane 2, zhiyun gimbal, camera steadycam system, best dslr camera stabilizer, camera stabilizer cheap

Id: 3LGrqTnBukk

Length: 29min 40sec (1780 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 14 2020