Gyroscopic fun!

[Matt Gerard]

Going to be using our EPIC to shoot at night out the back of vehicles and interiors out the front window, and in the bed of a pickup bed over the roof looking forward using gyros. First time for us, any useful tips? We will be aiming mostly at objects coming into the view of the headlights in front of different types of vehicle.

This isn't anything exciting people, just corporate gigs to pay the bills. But, I'm liking this gyro package we rented for the week. Can't wait to test it out.

So, if you have any tips or tricks, my ears are open. We do have a rigger that will be rigging the setup properly for the different scenarios.

Cheers!

Matt

 

[Robert Hart]

You have the real deal there so there's nothing I can usefully contribute. I'm here to learn as well. I assume you are not going to be trying any fast camera moves for the gyros will fight you.

You may discover there is a small zone of "take up" before the gyros forcefully resist your inputs. With really long lenses this may become a zone of floating movement or hunting if you are doing slow follows. You will need to train yourself to control it but I found it was not a big headache.

There is the possibility of purely vertical motion from the truck bed vertically vibrating the camera/lens combination enough to set off a jello effect. The gyros will not dampen parallel motion only movement on a radius. That should not be an issue unless there flex in the camera-lens junction, rods support, weight of a mattbox and flags etc., introduces a radial movement of the optical axis relative to the stabliser unit itself. Those top rods and wooden brace should take care of any structural compliance in the camera body/base attachment.

Put a strip of gaffer on the PL-Mount clamp ring so the lens does not work loose un-noticed in the dark. They hurt when they fall off and land on that pointybone on your ankle.

Check with an experienced operator what to do if there develops a chattering vibration after a violent upset. I vaguely recall a reference somewhere that this can damage a gyro if it is allowed to persist.

Please do not pay heed to my comments as qualified. They are not.

 

[Joe Shemesh]

Going to be using our EPIC to shoot at night out the back of vehicles and interiors out the front window, and in the bed of a pickup bed over the roof looking forward using gyros. First time for us, any useful tips? We will be aiming mostly at objects coming into the view of the headlights in front of different types of vehicle.

This isn't anything exciting people, just corporate gigs to pay the bills. But, I'm liking this gyro package we rented for the week. Can't wait to test it out.

So, if you have any tips or tricks, my ears are open. We do have a rigger that will be rigging the setup properly for the different scenarios.
Cheers!

Matt

Very similar to the heli gyro setup I use Matt - works a treat at 120 fps - http://www.reduser.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=29637&stc=1&d=1348649272

Best of luck with your shoot

best
joe

 

[Björn Benckert]

Im no pro on the subject but I used to have a gyro that we bought to use when shooting from race cars. The thing is since the gyro does not take away the cars vertical vibrations wich is something you got quite a lot of in a car the gyros will only stab your pan and tilt. (if im not mistaken when looking at your picture) So I would do some tests.

1. shoot with the rig you got.
2. shoot with the rig you got set up on a dampening surface.
3. rig the camera with no gyros firmly to the car body.
4. rig the camera on sandbag.

From my limited experience from fiddling with gyros on cars says that 3 and 4 will bring you most of luck... i.e leave the gyros out of the car

 

[Michael Brennan]

Ive used this in vehicles and a chopper and considering the diameter of the base, it is very top heavy and not the easiest of rigs to secure unless you have done your homework. The way it is rigged on the cart is ideal as it spreads the load across a wide area to prevent it toppling. Gyros will have less work to do if it is very securely fixed to the vehicle.



It will be awkward to operate if you need to pan to keep subject in frame as you go around corners because there is a lot of mass for you to move, including the spinning mass of the gyros.

Given you and it will both be moving I'd reccommend a lightweight bone dome (a skateboard helmet would do) to prevent a minor cut or bump to the side of your head.
In respect to shooting interiors and over the roof, will any part of the vehicle be in shot?
If it is it will be noticbly wobbling in frame whilst the background will be relativly more stable.

Operate from a remote monitor if you can, the more mass attached to the camera the less well the gyros work.
Schedule time to develope a technique and plan the money shots for later in the day if possible.

Mike Brennan

 

[Russ Fill]

Gyro's take a bit of time to get up to ideal speed so don't be in to big of a hurry to start to shoot let them do their thing. It may take as long as 10min before they are working at their best.

 

[PC Greene]

We used a gyro on a heli shot and found the following:

1) It took over 20 min to get up to speed
2) It got HOT at at that speed (burn your hand hot)
3) Using one gyro for each axis you want to stabalize is best
4) hanging the camera from bungies attached to a strructure was reccomemended
5) practice with it first as it will "fight" you until you learn a soft slow hand method of managing it.

 

[William Dempsey]

Watch out for rolling shutter at long focal lengths. I shot 100-300mm out of the back of a static SUV. The engine was still running and the engine vibrations caused some issues on the 3oo mm side.

 

[Matt Gerard]

This is my first chance to respond to all the awesome tips and feedback. We had our shoot over the past 2 nights. We were shooting reflective street signs from the drivers perspective in a minivan and simulated 18 wheeler truck. (the photos of that setup will make your toes curl) The first night we used the gyros in the van and the truck, and the camera op was fighting them the whole time. we had rented a set of arri 1.3's and settled on the 50mm to give us the widest FOV but keep the hood and dash out of the shot. I was elected driver, being the camera tech I wanted to be near the rig in case something went awry. My observations as a first time gyro setup-

1) Setup went fairly well. After messing with how to hold the rig in place, it was very stable and small enough to fit in between the seats. And didnt' scuff up the interior of the rented van too much

2) Operator experience and practice is crucial. It takes time to figure out how the thing wants to move, and how you need to handle the rig to get it to point at what you want it to. That's the easy part. Keeping it in the middle of the frame is the hard part. Especially when the for/aft gyro batt dies with no indicator other than the thing gets quieter. Our camera op didn't really have any time to practice on the thing other than a couple of test passes.

3) THEY GET HOT!!! Holy crap, I almost took the fingerprint off one finger when I was tilting the rig to move a cable underneath and the K-12 caught my finger in between it and the mount. The 2 side to side smaller ones had padded jackets on them, but the bigger one didn't.

4) As people posted earlier (and I read it before so I knew what to look for) up and down motion wasn't helped by the gyros. The whoe rig is suspended by bungees from the 2 upright frame members, and that bounced quite a bit. Granted the road that we were on was horrible, and fortunatley the director and the client took it for what it was. Otherwise it would have been the county work crew with a couple pallets of asphalt crack filler. And that wasn't gonna happen!

5) Mocha was able to track and stabilize the wavy boat motion of the footage, so it will be useable. Did some on site testing on my dit rig before we made the decision to -

6) Ditch the gyro rig for the 2nd night. A collective decision was made that the sharp little bumps in the road for the camera hard mounted to a tripod in the van was more acceptable to the extreme motion of the gyro rig. Also, that motion made it really hard to tell if the reflectivity of the signs were looking the way they were supposed to, so that resulted in a lot of "lets play that back" on set which chewed up some time. On the hard mount the client was able to watch the monitor and call it good/bad with out playback.

7) The batts don't last long. The smaller gyros ran off 12v in the van, but the larger gyro had 3 24v bucket batts. Batt 1 was used to spin the big gyro up, then swapped over to Batt 2 for 20 min , then to batt 3 for 20-30 min. They don't charge up that fast. so, we were short battery power for the large gyro which resulted in use getting shots with only the smaller gyros spinning, as we need to keep shooting, but were waiting for the buckets to charge up. We would have needed 6-9 bucket batts to keep a proper rotation of fresh batts.

8) Great learning experience! Loved working with the rig, but probably wasn't the perfect magic bullet for our shoot. With more practice time for the camera-op, I'm sure we could have made it work better, but no time. Its like tossing a steadycam rig at a camera op (who, while might be a great operator but never used a steadycam rig before), and expecting perfect shots.

I think mocha and AE's stabalize motion functions will be the saving grace of the first night. Plus editing 5k footage in to a 1080 timeline will give me gobs of room to work with.

The red worked flawlessly and prelim looks at the footage show great range with acceptable noise. We ended up shooting at 2000 iso, 10:1 5k HD. I'll post some stills when I start churning the footage through our RR Suite.

Thanks again to all that posted with advise and stories. I'm still a rookie in this world of RED, but with a welcoming community like this with folks that don't look down their noses at you because of your inexperience, its a great world to be in.