XCam Mini Stabilizer with GH2 - First Test Shots

A

aaronsternke

Active member
My first attempts with the new stabilizer! Recommended from Emm over at cheesycam.com. This is basically a Skyler Mini at about half the price. Sold from China on Ebay. I'm definitely VERY new at this, so don't cringe too much at my new-ness! Getting better every day.

https://vimeo.com/67613363
 
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Looks really good! No results shown on ebay now for this. Did you get the link from cheesycam? Also, what lens were you using?
 
dannyjl said:
Looks really good! No results shown on ebay now for this. Did you get the link from cheesycam? Also, what lens were you using?
Click to expand...

Yes I got the link there. I had to wait a few days for them to pop up. They sell pretty quickly. And I used the 14-140 for these shots (all at 14mm)
 
Haven't watched the whole thing yet, but the opening clips look great.

Can you give more details of what this is (model) and the difficulty of setup?

Lens question already asked. Looks interesting.

Thanks in advance.
 
stoneinapond said:
Haven't watched the whole thing yet, but the opening clips look great.

Can you give more details of what this is (model) and the difficulty of setup?

Lens question already asked. Looks interesting.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...


The XCam Mini Stabilizer is a very new product that XCam is making out of China... I really don't know anything about the company. It is VERY well constructed and came with a nice carrying case. I learned about it through cheesycam.com, and they compare it very favorably with the Skyler Mini.The Skyler is around $500, and this was $238 on eBay (+about $35 shipping to the US). They estimated 3 weeks for delivery, but it got here in 2 days (insane!).

The instructions are relatively clear, although the language barrier is clearly an issue. I had to look online to see how people balance their stabilizers... there are plenty of videos out there with people balancing Flycam Nanos, Glidecams, Skylers, etc... The process for balancing these is all basically the same – you add or subtract weights on the bottom "tripod legs" to get the drop time right (XCam recommends a 2.5 second drop time, which I've found to be about right) and use the fine-tuning knobs to adjust the front/back balance and the right/left balance. It's very tweaky to get it right but with some patience even a newbie can get it!

Once you have it balanced, you hold the stabilizer handle with one hand and use 2 fingers on your other hand to (very gently) control pan and tilt. This pan-tilt hand is the difficult one to get right... just BARELY touching it! It has helped just walking around the house with the stabilizer, learning how it behaves and learning how to react to it. It takes time!

Cool, best of luck to you.

Aaron
 
aaronsternke said:
My first attempts with the new stabilizer! Recommended from Emm over at cheesycam.com. This is basically a Skyler Mini at about half the price. Sold from China on Ebay. I'm definitely VERY new at this, so don't cringe too much at my new-ness! Getting better every day.

https://vimeo.com/67613363
Click to expand...

Cringe? Sir you look like you balanced out the weight sooooo well with that setup. Congratz! Looks great too!
How much did you have to compensate for the smoothness? Did you feel like you had to strain yourself to keep everything nice and flat?
 
Hi Taylor! Sorry just saw your reply. Thanks for the nice words!

It is definitely very tweaky to get the balance right, but I'm learning that's just how it is to work with a stabilizer. It is a learned skill. The more I've done it, the easier it is and more natural it becomes. But when I try to give the camera on the stabilizer to someone who hasn't used it, it moves all over the place. You have to really want to learn to do it!

Still really happy with my purchase. Compact, affordable, well-built.
 
Looks very good, some of the better stabilized test footage I've seen. My problem is that at my age (75) I have trouble doing a "gliding" walk without bouncing up and down. My solution was to purchase a lightly used Olympus OMD E-M5 for it's 5 axis in body IS. It can't do anything about the major bumps and jerks but it is staggeringly good at handling shake and jitters.

The biggest "fly in the ointment" is that Olympus thinks all we need to have is 30p (from what I can tell they didn't even make a PAL version). Fortunately I do almost all of my "motion picture" work in 30p with GH3's and a Canon HF100 so that's not a problem for me.
 
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