Just a basic overview of my Steadicam notes so far...
2 types of balance:
1. Steady balance (no pendulum effect) - no tilt/roll, useful for angled shots too
2. Auto-correct (yes pendulum effect) - automatically "rights" itself vertically
The steady balance is really cool - the weights don't swing forward when you move, so you can do angled shots and stuff, but you lose the dynamic roll (which is the pendulum effect), so it doesn't "right" itself automatically. But if you balance it for auto-correct, then it will swing back to perfectly balanced vertically. So there are 2 types of balance, depending on the shot you want.
Balance variables:
The balance depends on a few things:
1. Weight of camera (camera, batteries, tapes/memory, microphone, etc.)
2. Center of gravity (where the camera balances with all of the weight attached, LCD open, etc.)
3. What type of balance you want (steady or auto-correct)
4. If you need to do low shots (no T-bar)
Balance workflow:
The balance workflow is a little complicated, but once you understand it (which is very frustrating at first), it's really easy to do - just takes some tweaking. Remember that this is NOT a toy, it's a professional tool and requires a ton of practice to truly master. However, you can get super awesome shots right out of the box (the Youtube video I posted where my friend gets the mail is my first outing with it, not too bad!). My balance workflow has 9 initial adjustments:
1. T-Bar: Long or short (or none, but this is hard to balance)
2. Weights: Small or large (or none, or mix)
3. Height of T-Bar
4. Gimbal: Extension (for smaller cameras) or no extension
5. Location of camera on the skid (multiple holes)
6. Location of skid on the stage: Forward, center, or backwards (variable)
7. X Adjustment: Right, center, or left (variable)
8. Y Adjustment: Forward, center, or backwards (variable)
9. Gimbal friction adjust
Once you get your camera balanced, re-balancing the same camera is mostly just a matter of adjusting the X & Y variables, which are small tweaks. Like if you balance your camera at home, then take it somewhere, you'll need to do some small tweaks to re-balance it. Then there's the friction adjustment on the gimbal, if you want to change the drop time (if you're using auto-correct balance - it changes how long it takes to return to the vertical position, which again depends on the type of shot you want).
Flying the camera:
Using a steadicam requires 2 hands: one to hold the handle, and the other to use the control ring. There are 2 control rings:
1. Upper ring: pan, tilt (in all directions)
2. Lower ring: pan only (rotation around horizon)
Using the upper ring, you can not only control pan (or spin, if you'd like), you can control the tilt. Controlling the tilt is good for when you want to tilt the camera at an angle, as well as for offsetting the tilt that comes when you're walking, like when you turn and the camera hangs at an angle. So it's both for proactive shots (when you want a tilt angle) and reactive shots (when you don't want a tilt angle).
The lower control ring is for pan or spin only. This is really good when you're going around corners and want to do kind of a whip pan around the corner, or when you're walking in a circle around somebody and want to keep them at the center of the screen - you don't have to mess with the tilt angle with the lower control ring. This is good to use with the steady type of balance where it doesn't auto-correct itself, because then you don't have to worry about it swinging around.
Conclusion:
There's a lot of other little tricks and stuff, but that's the basic overview of how I set it up. I'm planning on spending the next year or two practicing weekly to get good at it. I picked up the Tiffen training DVD and there are a couple good books on Steadicam shooting as well, plus some really nice websites with sample shots. Here's a really good one to view some commercial footage from movies and other video endeavors:
http://www.steadishots.org/
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