DIY Equipment

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YouTube member dinthisane shares his first DIY video, and it's pretty clever. Using some ready made inexpensive 'Skate Buds' available online, he was able to create a very effective rotating video dolly. All you'll need is a flat base plate and a Tripod Head or Fluid head. It's a very simple way to go about mounting wheels without creating axles. As you can see these things are designed to carry a bit of weight too. You can find these little Skate Buds below.


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find-price-button Roller Skate Wheel Skate Buds via eBay

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find-price-button Roller Skate Wheel Skate Buds via Amazon

For a cheap sturdy head, you can should check out the one that we used on the Korean Clone of the SpiderTrax dolly found here: http://cheesycam.com/test-drive-spidertrax-clone-korean-dolly/

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find-price-button Professional Heavy Duty Ball Head Quick Release

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If you're looking to tackle a home made Wireless Follow Focus project, you might want to give VImeo member Phillip James a holla. For the past few months, he's been working with Arduino to design his own WFF, and seems to have worked out all the bugs. It definitely looks like all the parts are in the right places, and appears to be very precise in movement. Take note that one thing inexpensive WFF's are known for is the amount of noise it can generate. WFF's have a place and sound should always be captured seperately (like on real sets).

If you're not up to the task of a DIY the most inexpensive one to first hit the market was from Jag35. Although it worked pretty well, it's been polished up quite a bit lately. Pricing is unbelievably cheap if you've ever shopped around a for one. Prices are available following the link below.

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find-price-button Jag35 Wireless Follow Focus system

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camera stabilizer

It's probably been a while since anyone's used something like this. Very overpriced compared to what's on the market today, a bit odd looking, but might give some DIY'ers ideas for a different take on a body mounted camera stabilizer. There's a few more images following the link here.

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Tool-Less-Hot-Shoe-Adapter

Pretty sweet little hot shoe adapters allow you to add extra accessory mounts to your DSLR rigs without tools. There's another version of this adapter that has a nice female insert if you're trying to mount in onto a male stud. (Excuse that last sentence if it sounded a bit mature).

The knob below allows you to tighten or loosen and relocate as you please without carrying a spare driver tool. There's slighty cheaper 'cold shoe' mounts available, but price is about average on this one and a cool addition to your DSLR Cages or Accessory Brackets.

Tool-Less-hot-shoe
find-price-button Tool Less Accessory Hot Shoe Mount

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The IGUS linear guide rail has been one of the most popular off-the-shelf Rails used for DIY camera sliders. It's a solid build and fairly smooth slide and has been the foundation for other companies to 'rebrand' back into the Video market. One of the 'cons' of this slider is the lack of exact speed control when pushing or pulling manually. There's some friction with this type of slider which could be a good thing, but also could be a bad thing trying to control a very consistent move across the entire rail.

This time Vimeo member weelian soh attaches a basic DC high torque motor and a PWM controller (to control speed) from eBay to a DIY IGUS rail slider to achieve a consistent speed all the way across. A very nice DIY if you don't mind the amount of noise a DC motor can produce, and If you want to find out more, there's a ton of photos and information about his build following the link in the details here: https://vimeo.com/21491431

If you want to start building your own slider, IGUS has made it easy by providing a pretty much ready to go kit of rails and carrier. You'll just need to mount it to your tripod and drill a hole to add a fluid head.

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find-price-button IGUS Slider and Carrier for DIY Camera Slider

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I've lost a few myself. Once that little guy is gone, you've rendered your tripod quick release plate pretty much useless. You can order these replacement screws through some of the big retailers for over $10 dollars, or you can check out eBay for some cheaper prices. Problem is you've got to wait weeks for that over seas shipping, so might be something small to keep handy. Call it Preventative Maintenance..

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find-price-button 1/4 x 20 Replacement Screw for Quick Release Plates

[Update] This one would work out as well, but doesn't look like the standard 'slotted' screw head, where a quarter comes in handy. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/302185-REG/Wimberley_SW_100_Extra_Screw_1_4_20.html

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Vimeo member Lolo Two is at it again with another DIY project. This time using EMT a.k.a conduit to assemble a solid DSLR style Fig Rig / Cage. Interesting to see the 90 degree Conduit connectors in use, and gives me more ideas on where I could use these things. [Thanks Lolo Two]

If you haven't passed by your local hardware store and looked through the Conduit / EMT section, you'll be surprised to find a whole bunch of clamps and connectors that have a ton of uses. I think I found some very cool clamps that can be mounted to 15mm Rails as accessory mounts.

As far as a DIY cage, I'm still hung up on my DIY DSLR Cage found here: http://cheesycam.com/cheesycam-exclusive-diy-dslr-cage-stabilizer/. Using inexpensive strut channels in my design requires zero drilling and just two cuts to assemble a solid rig with a bunch of different mounting points.

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RigWheels are some clever new items targeting the DIY audience. Although they run a bit high in price for most, the ability to quickly and easily move them from one project to another makes them quite appealing. You can literally mount them with a single bolt, and a clamp knob or wing nut.

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Check out the video above for just a few ideas of what you can do with a set of smooth mini rollers, and the video below which takes you through an entire DIY project crafting a full track tripod dolly. Beats drilling angle iron, that's for sure.

Available Below
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find-price-button Rigwheels

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ML - Magic Lantern has been an ongoing software mod for the Canon 5D Mark II & now Canon T2i / 550D. Here's a video from Vimeo member Moira O'Brien showing off some of the latest mods some DSLRs lacked in it's release. Lots of cool tools thrown in that not even Canon's latest T3i has, but keep in mind that this modifies the camera's original design (not permanently).

When running the ML software on your camera, you're asking it to do things it wasn't originally designed to do. Is it safe? I've never heard any complaints, i've never head of any cameras failing because of the Software, but the T2i was notorious for over heating issues on short recordings. One thing I don't think i've ever recalled seeing is a temp gauge as part of Magic Lantern's features. As always, you do this on your own risk.

I personally am no longer using Magic Lantern software just because it didn't fit into the work flow. When it was first released, the software needed to remain on the media card (or all the cards you are using) in order to boot up from it. This means you can't quickly format your cards. I do totally support the Magic Lantern idea, I think it's awesome and it's developers like these that give more ideas to the Manufacturers about how they need to step up their game, and add these new features to future models. These types of mods changed the way people saw the Panasonic GH1. In fact, ML was out before Canon released a firmware update for the 5D Mark II to add manual audio levels. We'll just have to wait and see how many more of these other ML features are implemented into newer cameras.