More weights on Merlin for outdoor??

[ryan brown]

I'm trying to achieve a certain shot, and I'm having troubles getting it PERFECT with the merlin. The short I'm working on is in an outdoor location, and even the slightest gust of wind throws my shot completely off.

After about 40 minute's or so I managed to get a shot that looks pretty damn good, but it's not quite perfect (and it took probably 30 attempts, with two guys surrounding me with giant bounce boards to block the wind).

My setup is according to the cookbook online, but I know you can add more weights to the front and bottom and still get it balanced.

If I add one mid to the front, and one finish to the bottom, that'd give me more stabilization in the winds, right? It seems that it would, but my logic could be off.

 

[mikkowilson]

You can add weigth to the system, but you have ot do it uniformly to have it be any use. Start by adding some to the camera and then balance for that (using more weight elsewhere)
But don't go over the recomended max weight of the system.

With big Steadicams we have 3 tricks for wind:
1) Get out of the wind.
Seems like you've allready been dooing this. There's some tips in the back of the manual to help with this one.
2) Gyros.
Techincally the most compicated, and not feasable on the light Merlin. Kenlabs Gyros are sometimes mounted to rigs in paticularly windy conditions to helkp styability, but they take a lot of power and are noisy. Not to mention expensive.
3) Antlers.
Instead of adding weight to the system, we spread some of it out even more to increase stability. To do this we use "Antlers" which is basically a pole with a weight on each end that is attached by it's center to the rig.

Antlers in use at a Steadicam workshop.

This might be a good solution too, you should be able to fasion a smaller set to work on the Merlin.

- Mikko