Its probably safe to assume that most people don’t want to see a shaky picture of jerky video. As a still photographer, that was not a major concern. Even in a dimly lit situation, I can hand hold 1/8th of a second. Now that I’m also shooting video for our website, its become obvious that I’ve been taking that for granted. TV photographers have always had to drag their “sticks” with them everywhere while I’ve been running around foot-loose and fancy free. Learning to carry and use a tripod has been a rough transition for me. I try to come up with every excuse not to use one. But the results are generally unforgiving.

Recently, I purchased a handheld version of camera stabilizer for videographers. You might have seen them used on film sets, sporting events and now in St. Louis. Basically, it looks like a mono-pod on steroids and stabilizes the camera by using inertia, center-of-gravity, and more physics that make my simple brain go “blaaaa.” The results can be pretty cool and can be described as “flying.”

But it is heavy. I have the Glidecam 4000 Pro that weights about five pounds and my camera is also another six. So try holding an eleven pound dumbbell straight in front of you, with one arm, for 30 minutes.

So far, the results are not working in my favor. I don’t seem to get the beautiful “flying” footage like you see in the movies. The good news is, I hear that I’ll learn it in now time: maybe a year or two.
That’ll give me just enough time to pop open a can of spinach and hit the gym for some bicep-curls. I can purchase an articulated arm that is attached to a body vest, but I’m not so sure the RoboCop look is what I’m going for.