Of Ronin-Stabilisers and First Client Projects!
Remember Anton Fedorko of whom I talked during this Super-Week? Who captured Chernobyl with help of his Canon 6D and Ronin-stabiliser? Well, he came in again today to bring the Ronin around and introduce us to the magic that is a motorised stabiliser.
He presented us the Ronin with all the advantages and disadvantages it had, giving us a short demonstration on how to use and load it and then let us have a go at it. Even though I was hesitant at first, I joined in the fun later when we were going outside to test how the Ronin stabilised while running and walking. I ran twice with it, having gripped it differently each time around to test how it is working.
Apart from the fact that the stabiliser truly catch each step and vibration, it was interesting to test how heavy this gear would get if you use it a while. It was fine for the minute or so I held it, but much like a boom pole, I would not want to hold it for more than five minutes straight.
Having said that, I feel that the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages:
- With a price of approx. 1200€, the it is quite an expensive gear to use if you only use it occasionally.
- The motors that keep the camera itself stable are extremely sensitive.
- You have to balance all three axes of the stabiliser in order for the camera to keep a smooth and steady level, which requires you to go through all of those axes and rebalance it several times.
- If you have managed to balance all axes as good as possible, you best want the motors to only take up to max. 6% of the battery power to keep the camera steady.
- Anything above 6% is not practical at all for longer use since it really eats away from your battery life. Anton managed to keep the battery usage of the motors in the lowest category of 0-2% and even he would have used up a battery's load within 4 hours max. - The stabiliser itself is really heavy and you need a lot of muscle power to use it for one day of shooting material.
- Changing batteries means that you have to dismount the camera from the stabiliser, reload it and mount it on the stabiliser again. Hopefully without losing the balance you already obtained beforehand.
+ Once you collected the money, managed to balance it and hopefully never have to rebalance it again, the Ronin produces some great footage.
You can see how the stabiliser looks like in the following footage I took during demonstration:
After the great demonstration and a lot of testing, we were set out to work on our very first client job! I couldn't believe it, but since Hartlepool is really turning in an evermore growing creative hub, we are supposed to document the closure, build and reconstruction of one entire street for the construction company. A job which will play out over 30 weeks.
So we started out demonstrating our hitherto attained technical skills by using the Panasonic AVC-HD, monopods and tripods to capture the street in its entirety. A fun experiment, since I was able to capture the pavement in the exact moment a cyclist crossed my image. It looked lovely on camera and I hope that my frost-bitten shaking did not botch it. But we will see. So far, and despite the concentrated face I'm making, I am really loving it!
