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To celebrate 20 years of Make:, we’re looking back at projects from our first issue. Readers learned how to build a camera-stabilizing rig for Steadicam smooth shots in “$14 Video Camera Stabilizer” from Make: 01.
Note: this is a classic article. Some of the information is likely obsolete.
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Why I built a cheap video camera stabilizer
Professional camera stabilizers use a complex, levered arrangement to capture smooth-looking video, even when the camera and camera operator are in motion. The camera operator may walk (or even jog), move through tight hallways and doorways, and climb up and down stairs without shaking the camera.
Unfortunately, professional Steadicams cost upwards of $10,000. Even cheap, third-party stabilizers cost at least $600. So I decided to make my own. It cost me $14. Here’s how you do it. Whether you’re an aspiring filmmaker, a videographer, the family documentarian, or if you just want more utility out of your video camera, you’ll appreciate this video-cam stabilizer.
Set up
Project Steps
Make the handle
This first step is pretty easy. Just attach the T-joint and one end cap to one of the pipes to form a basic handle.
Use the vise for final tightening. Don’t use your hands to tighten the T-joint and end cap on the pipe. You’ll just hurt yourself and not get it tight enough.
Drill holes in the end caps
Put one of the end caps in the vise as shown. Then drill a ¼” hole in the center of the cap. It doesn’t have to be perfectly centered, but the closer the better. You really want to use the vise because you’re drilling through a quarter inch of galvanized steel. It’s enough to bring weak drills to a dead stop and will definitely do a number on your hand if you just try to hold it. Not to mention it can get hot. Protective eyewear such as safety goggles should ALWAYS be worn when using any power tool. Also, a little bit of machine oil (or even vegetable oil) can make this easier and help preserve your drill bit.
I like using a slow speed because when the bit comes out the other side, it’ll jerk from grabbing onto the metal. It’s far more pleasant to have a slow jerk than to have the drill suddenly fly out of your hand.
Do your drilling in an area that’s easy to clean up. You’ll produce lots of metal shards. And don’t use you fingers to wipe away the shards! They’ll get in your skin. Use a brush or a vacuum.
Do this for two end caps.
Assemble the mounting
The mounting requires a bolt, two lock washers, a flange washer, a nut, the wing nut, and a drilled end cap. Put a lock washer on the bolt and then put it through the end cap. You need to have the bottom of the bolt coming out the top of the outside part of the end cap, as shown here. Put another lock washer on and then the nut. Put the end cap in the vise and tighten the nut with pliers. The lock washers will keep the bolt from turning.
You’ll want to make this really tight because this is where your camera attaches. You want it tight not because the camera could fall off, but because putting the camera on and taking it off requires lots of turning action. If this mounting loosens, the bolt will pivot around, as will your camera, making it hard to keep still. If this happens while you’re filming, you’ll have to stop and find the pliers.
Use a hammer to dent the center of the flange washer. You can do this by putting the washer over the hole in the weight, putting the head of a bolt on the hole, and hammering the bolt. The washer will distribute the force away from the single point of contact. The wider the washer the better. If you don’t use the washer, the camera will shake a lot right at this connection, as well as put a great deal of stress on this one tiny spot. It could damage your camera, so if you lose this washer, don’t use the stabilizer.
Use your fingers to tighten the wing nut on the mounting. DO NOT use the pliers. You could strip the threads on your camera or break the tripod mount. Both are bad.
Assemble the base
You’ll need the barbell weight and a lock washer, two flange washers, a bolt, a nut, and a drilled end cap. They’ll go together in the pattern shown. The bolt goes through two washers that sandwich the weight. Then stick on the end cap, put on the lock washer, and finally the nut. Hand-tighten the parts until they are snug.
The lock washer deep inside the end cap will keep a grip on the nut, so you don’t have to stick pliers down there to turn it. Just turn the cap. Then stick the cap in the vise, and use the screwdriver to tighten the bolt, or just grab the weight and turn it. The weight should turn the bolt, and the vise will keep the cap from turning.
I like to tighten the bolt until the outer washer starts to bend inward. This reduces the amount the bolt sticks out, which makes the base more stable when you set it down.
If you use the base as a stand (not recommended because it’s easy to knock over), you can buy rounded bolts and little rubber feet. These will make a much nicer base that won’t wobble. You can tell I like to do this and I say it’s easy to knock over from experience. My camera still works, though.
All together now
Lastly, take the remaining two pipes, screw them into the T-joint of the handle, and attach the base and the mounting. And you’re done! You can tighten these parts as much as you’d like. Either give them a good hand-tightening or the full-fledged vise-and-pliers tightening. The only reason not to use the vise and pliers is if you want to be able to collapse the stabilizer or swap components. You can vary the pipe lengths and barbell weight however you like.
I would probably refer to this combination as the “sport model,” mostly because its balance point (with camera) is near the T-joint and can be spun around by the handle pretty well. It’s really agile. Longer bars and heavier weights change the handling.
When you store your stabilizer without the camera attached, the mounting washer is left unsecured on the end. I recommend taking off the wing nut, putting on the washer, and then screwing the wing nut back on. That will keep the washer from getting lost.
A MAKE: staffer's experience
A mechanically minded friend and I spent about 45 minutes building this camera stabilizer in my modestly equipped garage workshop. It was generally easy, and we didn’t get hung up anywhere.
The hardest part was drilling the holes in the end caps. We used a stationary drill press instead of a handheld drill, which helped considerably. Unfortunately, we didn’t do a very good job of centering the drill bit within the end cap. The hole was straight, but it wasn’t close enough to the middle for my liking.
Our second drilling attempt fared better because we center-punched the end cap to know where to drill. One thing, though — you’ve got to add oil to the end cap as you drill to keep the drill bit from getting dull from the heat. Luckily, you only need two end caps with holes. If you mess up on one, you can use it as the bottom cap, and try again.
End caps are bulged on top. We flattened them with a file. We could have avoided this step and it would have been fine, but we figured a flat top would make the camera more stable.
We came up with a different way to bend the flange washers. Our method involved bolting two washers together through the center of the weight like a sandwich (the weight in the middle and the washers on either side, held together by a bolt). We put this contraption in a vise and used a vise grip to tighten the nut on the bolt until we’d bent the flange washers adequately. The downside of this was that both flange washers ended up bent instead of just the one that we needed. Not the end of the world, but if you’re concerned about having a flat flange washer for the bottom piece, pick up an extra one at the store.
I used a 5LB weight and tested it using the video feature on my Olympus D550 camera (which weighs under one pound). The counterbalance was much too heavy for my camera so there was a lot of camera movement in the video. Still, it was better than if I’d been running with just the camera. I plan to buy a lighter weight the next time I pass a sporting goods store so I can give the stabilizer a real workout.
—Robin Outis
Conclusion
Ready. Aim. Shoot steady.
The side handle is used to stabilize side-to-side rocking. (Vertical shaking is pretty much dampened by the weight.) You may hold the handle however you’d like. The way I like to hold it is shown here. How you do it accounts for 80 percent of the smoothness. This is true even with professional equipment with fancy shocks and hydraulics. Don’t expect this thing to perform miracles. You have to practice using your arms and body to create a smooth motion. Watch your hands while you walk, and see how level you can keep them relative to the ground. Keep your legs bent and learn how to “glide.” I talked with someone who has used a professional camera stabilizer and he said this was “really just as good.” Getting good results is not so much about the equipment, but how you use it. That’s really true about everything.
Modifications and add-ons
The easily unscrewable camera stabilizer lends itself to a number of useful and simple adaptations and enhancements.
Inverting bracket
The bad thing about the stabilizer by itself is that it makes it very hard to get ground-level shots (running along the ground while looking up at a person). So, you can build a little inverting bracket that wraps around the camera and allows it to be attached to the stabilizer on the top rather than the bottom. Just flip the whole stabilizer upside down so the weight is now on the top and the camera is on the bottom.
You can buy an aluminum bar at a hardware shop, cut it to length with a hacksaw, drill the holes, and bend it using the vise. Make sure the top hole is exactly above the bottom hole or it will be off balance. Use a ruler to make measurements. You’ll lose about 1.8″ in the bend, so be careful to account for that. It’s also much easier to get a controlled bend if you make a little notch with the hacksaw on the inside where each bend should be.
Alternative weights and pipe lengths
You could use a 24″-long pipe at the bottom and a 5LB weight. This combination produces smoother shots for vertically oriented movement. Tilting the camera is much harder because of the heavier weight and longer arm. So if you want more agility, use the sport version with all 12″ bars and the 2½LB weight. Having a variety of lengths and weights is a reason you may not want to tighten everything with pliers. Good hand-tightening is usually enough to keep everything together for a day’s worth of shooting. The 24″ version is pretty tall. Using the inverting bracket, you can get nice, ground-level running video
Large sled platform
Here’s a simple way to add a big platform to the top of the stabilizer for use with larger cameras (or simply so you can turn the mounting nut rather than the camera).
Cut a rectangular piece of wood at least as wide as the base of your camera. Buy a ½” flange to replace the mounting cap on top. Put screws through 3 of the 4 holes of the flange and into the wood platform. Drill a ¼” hole all the way through the platform where the fourth hole in the flange is and use that for your mounting bolt. This is a quick and easy way to really beef up the camera support for bigger cameras. Unfortunately, you can’t use the inverting bracket in combination with this platform.
Modification Mailbag
A surprisingly large number of amateur physicists and certified mechanical engineers write fairly long emails pointing out problems with this design and offering suggestions. Here’s a small sample:
Suggestion: The bottom weight should be exactly the same weight as the camera (see Physics 101, page 87).
Reply: Every camera weight is different. Scales with ounce or gram precision are not common, making it difficult for people to weigh their cameras. Also, weights sold in exact ounces or grams are not easy to come by. If you have access to these, that’s great! More power to ya. But 2½LB or 5LB barbell weights from a sports store are close enough approximations for most people with consumer-grade cameras. Unsteadiness produced by disparate weights can also be reasonably overcome with practice.
Suggestion: PVC or aluminum bars would be better than steel.
Reply: You are free to use whatever material you choose, but I like steel piping because it is strong and comes pre-threaded — no cutting, no gluing, no welding. I can collapse the camera stabilizer for storage and reassemble it in less than 30 seconds without using any tools.
Featured photograph by Mike Martin. Step photos by Evan McNary.
This project appeared in Make: Vol. 01. Subscribe to Make: for more great articles.