By now, most of you guys know what a wearable gimbal is.
It’s an electronic stabilizer that holds a GoPro, and gives you really smooth footage.
They’re great for first person video, but arguably even better for filming other riders.
A shot of someone riding in front of you could look almost like it was filmed with a drone.
One limitation of wearable gimbals is that they only hold action cameras, which have
tiny lenses and tiny sensors.
I got to thinking; what if I could stabilize a big old camera and ride around with it?
That could be the ultimate follow cam.
Introducing the Seth’s Bike Hacks 4000 chest mounted Digital Single Lens Mirrorless Stabilizer
Rig.
This is a combination of several GoPro brackets, an expensive handheld stabilizer, and one
late night in my office.
So, basically a whole bunch of stuff being used improperly.
Of course, the heart of this operation is the stabilizer, which is the Zhiyun Crane.
I convinced Zhiyun to send me one of these in exchange for some screen time, but I’m
not sure this is what they had in mind.
Almost immediately I noticed that the stabilizer was designed to turn very slowly.
It’s also extremely heavy, and very easy to hit on the handlebars when leaning forwards.
So, the plan was to follow Zach carefully and try not to destroy
all my stuff.
At the time of filming we didn’t realize how bad the wind noise would be with the camera’s
internal microphone.
Looking back it makes sense.
Between the delay in steering and the bulkiness of the rig, it was starting to look like this
was a bad idea.
After a while though I started to get the hang of riding with it.
Staying on smoother trails helped too.
So although we got a few cool looking shots, I’m sorry to say that the Seth’s Bike
Hacks 4000 is not the future of advanced follow cam technology.
No, it’s probably better to use this handheld stabilizer the way it was designed—that
is handheld.
So, a lot of you guys are going to get what you’ve been asking for.
Some video clips of me sessioning crap around the trails.
First we tried this gap from the lip of this tabletop.
I guess the landing area is supposed to be a berm for bypassing the jump.
I didn’t throw my weight right on the first try.
It would have been nice to have some clouds, but I’m still pretty happy with this shot.
Now it’s worth noting that Florida mountain bike trails are often a mix of manmade jumps,
wooden features, and remnants of failed public works projects.
This can be a negative or a positive depending on your riding style.
That explains this patch of concrete, which gave a pretty nice kick.
It even looked possible to 360.
Not the nicest 360’s ever, but the videography looked awesome.
Next we went to this narrow wooden camel hump thing.
Yeah I
cased it a little bit, but whatever, I’ll take it.
As a test run with my new toy I’d say it was highly successful.
So I hope you guys enjoyed this video even though we didn’t accomplish what we originally
set out to do.
This Crane really was a pleasure to use, so I’m leaving a link to it in the description.
What do you guys think?
Would you like to see more planned shots and sessions on trail features?
Thanks for riding with me today, and I’ll see you next time.