Simply, My 5D mk3 with 24-105 lens on doesn't give me enough weight at the front to get a great pan balance so I add a little weight in the form of focus motors to the front to get it right. This all works fine and I get good balance and good gains. Pan around 200, roll around 60 and tilt around 40. I bought a battery pack for the 5D. Just screws into the bottom hole and lets you add a second battery to the camera. It also adds a little weight which I though would be perfect for my pan balancing. It would do away with the focus motors. I balanced everything pretty perfectly. (see video. I'll post the link below once it uploads PASSWORD: movi , (I made a few adjustments after the video to make it perfect). Now I cant get my gains on the pan past 100, roll past 10 and tilt past 5 without violent vibrations. I've no idea why this would be. Even if it wasn't balanced that well I should still be getting higher gains than that surely? I checked that nothing was loose and there was no movement between the battery back and the camera and the plate. I'm stumped... Please give ANY thoughts... Thanks a million! Sam
Sam The battery grip turns into a extension of your camera. This connection may appear robust but is not 100% golden. The tiny play between the camera keeps it from tuning up well. I would bet that by removing the grip you will be back to your previous tuning numbers. Cheers Mike
Well Brad and Mike were right. Even after I took the camera of the rig and shook it upside down without noticing any movement in any part the vibrations still persisted. Removed the battery pack and it all went fine. Must have been the smallest of small movements that through everything. Moral of the story - You don't know it's a bad idea until it proves itself to be so! Thanks guys!
Can you tape the battery pack on to increase the mechanical coupling between it and the camera body. Anything the slightest bit loose acts like a pendulum -- only it wobbles in opposition to the way that the stabilization system wants it to go -- so the stabilization reverses, only to have the pendulum go the other way -- and so on... Andy.
Hey again Andy. Think I'm just going to chalk this one up to "it's not gonna work". Don't want to start taping or cable tieing things. Besides looking messy it would be a nightmare to change batteries then. Thanks for the input!