A "bouncy" operating problem

There's definitely a shift in vertical perspective going on.

There's more to it than this, but practice with a glass of water. Once you can move around your house without it moving around too much, you will have gained the muscle memory skill needed to move a gimbal through space in a straight line. The 'ninja walk'.

It's mostly about how you walk as well as allowing your arms to boom slightly to compensate for each step. I find holding the handles by my fingertips helps for certain shots.

 

Hi Peter. Do you have a support vest, like a Ready Rig or an Armorman? Or are you planning to hold that rig up with your bare arms?

In addition to walking smoother, I'm often having to make adjustments to settings in order to reduce footsteps -- more stiffness from the motors, less tension from my Ready Rig. There are also 4th axis stabilizers out there, but they get expensive.

For most cameras, I like to set my cage up so that the bottom of the cage is all the way down, and then the top of the cage comes down to wherever the top of the camera is (to hold the top slider plate). This leaves some space on top of the rails for me to put my Focus receiver and sometimes the Video transmitter, usually strapped on with Bongo Ties.

Then you can adjust the Tilt Vertical CG balance by moving the whole cage up or down, loosening the 4 levers in the middle of the cage, by the motor. I usually do this by tilting the camera all the way up, so the lens is facing the ceiling, and then you can see which way the camera wants to fall.

If you watched Tabb's older video tutorial on this, I see why you're confused because he adjusted Vertical balance by sliding the bottom of the cage up. On the M15, you'd use the 4 middle levers and move the whole cage and camera.

Good luck and have fun,
-Graham

 

Just a couple of notes about balance of the rig vs. visible stepping.

The gimbal only takes care of rotation, and stepping is a vertical and somewhat lateral shift. Unless you have very low stiffness settings your settings won't add to the effects of stepping.

Try balancing to perfection then picking up the rig and walking around with it - with it turned OFF. If the rig basically stays put then you're walking well, if it moves all around then even though the motors are counteracting the minor rotational effects of stepping, the motors are the least of your worries.

The COG determines the position of the top of the cage, though you can shift the height of the side bars down to make sure they clear the pan motor (if your setup allows you to get that far away). To add distance from the pan motor you can add weight on the top of the cage to bring the COG up thus bringing the camera package down overall. This is certainly diminishing returns though.

There's a jolt rejection feature in the new software if you have to really run fast with the rig thus causing unavoidable disturbance in the vertical and lateral position of the camera trajectory.

If you don't have a spring-loaded vest setup you can still make a poor man's Walter Klassen Slingshot to remove stepping and fatigue. There's a recent photo of such a setup in my instagram feed (link in sig).