Experiment two

Yesterday was a good day. After the success of the last experiment, I headed off to Lowes where I spent a long time oogling power tools. I finally tore myself away from the table saws, and purchased a motley assortment of pipes, nuts, bolts, and flanges before heading home and building this:

I used the basic set of instructions from this website - it requires a few basic tools and a little shop knowledge, but it's really easy - if you're any kind of DIYer, you'll be just fine. A few of my notes from the project:

1: Invest in a decent drill and high quality drill bits. Out of curiosity, I tried out my cordless 14.4v drill on the end caps, but the galvanized steel stopped it cold. So I lugged out my 8 amp monster, which made short work of the caps. Definitely use some oil - it'll preserve your drill bits. A good drill will serve you well for many many projects.

2: Be careful not to over-tighten the counterweight assembly. I didn't think I had until I noticed the bottom flange had cracked and had to be replaced.

3: Make sure you're using bolts, not screws - your camera needs to attach to it! I almost made that mistake and would have felt very stupid if i accidentally drilled a hole in my camera while trying to mount it.

4: I had a hell of a time finding 10" pipes until I realized they were labeled as "pipe nipples" and sold in little plastic bags. I was worried 10" would be too short, but it's plenty.

The grand total for the project was about $16 and it took about 30 minutes for me to assemble - most of that time was spent trying to use my super cheap and crappy wrench to tighten everything.

The results? Pretty good! The rig is certainly easy to use - it's heavy enough to feel solid but light enough to lug around for a few hours without any problem. Here's an edit of the test footage Sean and I shot:

 I'm pretty pleased with it - not just because of the effectiveness of the tracking shots, but because I managed to break a bunch of new obstacles during the two hours it took to shoot this. The weather was oppressively hot and I was already tired from coaching, so I think we can chalk it up to the latent magical powers of my MovNat shorts. I knew there was something special about them...

**Seriously, the shorts are great. You should pick up a pair when you attend the MovNat seminar in Chapel Hill on September 10th!

What do you think??