these are fast replacing the full vest and arm steadicam, right?

The stabilization is nice indeed.

But this is still going to give back pains, holding the camera out like that.
Some body attachment system distributing the weight to the core of the human body would make it better for longer use.

VMP

That handlebar arrangement is fine if all it does is control the direction of the camera. As the only means of supporting the combined weight of the camera and the rig .... no way. This would be used one time then buried in a closet.

I don't see any difference between this and the SteadiCam except that the latter relies on springs and camera inertia to do the steadying, while this device uses "active" stabilization with motors and sensors. A big, heavy rig would still need a harness, I think.

This device offers more flexibility, though, such as the ability of a remote camera operator to pan and tilt while the camera carrier is just responsible for positioning in the 3D space. Very interesting.

I think I saw some sort of "mount" (to the ground?) in a couple of the shots on the video. They went by pretty fast so I'm not sure, but it did seem intended to take the weight off the operator ... or not.

+1 gary's comment.

and add to that i'm already sea-sick of hand held / steady cam shots. there's certainly a place for them, but i think theyre very intrusive in a lot of situations where the view should be concentrating on the subject, not the movement.

old fart

interesting thought about camera weight offset by body mounting. However, most vest units with the arm, and the weighted mount with monitor and batteries all adds up to even heavier I would think. Easier to set down a gimble, than to park on a chair wearing all that steadicam battle garb. I would think, anyway.
Dang near bought the vest outfit, then these smaller, lighter gimbles started popping. But I am still using a tiny Merlin clone that works almost as well.

The video shows many instances of using supporting rigs as well as the dynamic situations which are suited to short term hand holding. Hand holding for sustained shooting (without a body harness) would be quickly fatiguing.

You can do it on the cheap as well I got this 3 axis hand held gimbal for gopro direct from china for ~£220 ish and it's pretty nice for low budget and because it holds horizontal so well it defishes nicely, I shot this in the gopro 2k setting pro tune raw all hand held resized /cropped to 1080p in vegas no stabilisation in post all as shot, fabricating a shoulder mount for it at the moment

Feiyu tech 3 axis go pro



Mark