Alan's Glidecam Smooth Shooter

Well, I've had my Glidecam Smooth Shooter just over a week now and this evening I finally found time to adjust the thing and balance it up just right for my Glidecam 2000 Pro with my Sony HDR-FX1e sitting on top of it.

First off, I've had the Glidecam 2000 Pro for a little while now and had a nice balance for it. What I found it when I got the Smooth Shooter, though, was that, for "best performance", I had the thing a bit heavier than was ideal. This came about from reading the manual for the smooth shooter. Now the arm on the smooth shooter has two springs. Factory defaults are to leave these two springs at their most loose positions, and this is how the rig should be left when not being used for a period of time. The manual tells us that best performance is achieved when the springs are at their tightest. I found that, out of the box, the smooth shooter balanced with my 2000 pro just right with two springs at their lightest. Hardly ideal it seems.

Now I could either lighten the weight and have the thing balanbce on one tight spring or add extra weight and try to get the rig balanced on two tight springs. For now, at least, I opted to try for the lighter weight, giving me a better chance at grabbing quick and easy hand held shots.

I removed some weights from the bottom of the sled and lengthened the central column and, lo and behold, I got a perfect balance (better than before even) in a couple of minutes. removing a spring from the smooth shooter and tightening up the one left took another ten minutes and I was away.

Click on the pictures below for high res images. Notice that the centre picture shows me with no controlling hand on the column. I simply wanted to show off the nice balance I achieved. Apologies for these first pictures being taken in the dark using a flash. I'll swap for some better images when I can.

regards

Alan - 28th October 2005