Shooting Handheld

[And1]

I'll be shooting several walk and talk scenes on the Blackmagic Pocket 6k (not great on the rolling shutter side) - the director wants it to be handheld, so I wanted to ask if you have any ideas on how to go about it. I'm thinking of an easyrig but looking for more ideas. Using an even wider lens would be a good idea as well, but our first choice is to keep it at 28mm (Leica).   

We need to keep the handheld look but not for the viewer to become too dizzy.

 

[TomTheDP]

28mm should be decent on the 6k sensor. You go super wide and you really start to lose a lot of depth, but its scene/location dependent obviously.

My suggestion would be to add as much weight as you can. If you can get the rig close to 5 pounds it will make your movement so much nicer.

An Easyrig for me doesn't really help to stabilize. Just saves your arms a bit for longer takes. If anything sometimes the easyrig makes stuff less stable, when people let the camera get away from their center of gravity.

[And1]

Thank you for your response, I've thought of putting some smallrig counterweights below the camera - and adding a Peak Design neck strap, but haven't seen anyone trying it. Do you believe that would make a big difference? Has anyone tried that?

[fuzzynormal]

Years and years ago I literally used a counterweight'ed lead pipe to do some stuff that I wanted to look smooth'ish, but still very much handheld.  The rig weighed about 10 lbs when done.  Not the type of thing you want to run around with ALL day, but for short stretches it was perfect for the look I wanted.

Something like this: 

[HockeyFan12]

https://www.cowboystudio.com/product_p/shoulder support.htm

[newfoundmass]

2 hours ago, HockeyFan12 said:

https://www.cowboystudio.com/product_p/shoulder support.htm

You can find this for a fraction of the price on Ebay. It's also not very good IMO.

A weighted shoulder rig is probably your best bet, unless you can afford an easyrig.

[HockeyFan12]

Fair point about the price. I paid $20 or something for mine. That said, I adore it and prefer it over any shoulder rig I've seen for smaller cameras. (Nothing against a weighted shoulder rig, but building something that large out seems to defeat the purpose of a small camera to me.) But YMMV.

Lenses with IS and/or a loupe are good options too.

[newfoundmass]

41 minutes ago, HockeyFan12 said:

Fair point about the price. I paid $20 or something for mine. That said, I adore it and prefer it over any shoulder rig I've seen for smaller cameras. (Nothing against a weighted shoulder rig, but building something that large out seems to defeat the purpose of a small camera to me.) But YMMV.

Lenses with IS and/or a loupe are good options too.

The main reason I suggest a weighted shoulder rig is that it will help stabilize the Pocket 6K better while keeping the handheld look they're going for.

[TomTheDP]

7 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

Years and years ago I literally used a counterweight'ed lead pipe to do some stuff that I wanted to look smooth'ish, but still very much handheld.  The rig weighed about 10 lbs when done.  Not the type of thing you want to run around with ALL day, but for short stretches it was perfect for the look I wanted.

Something like this: 

Did this like 10 years ago, actually worked well for the Sony camcorder I was using at the time. The good old days before I had to spend 20k on gear every year lol

[herein2020]

10 hours ago, And1 said:

I'll be shooting several walk and talk scenes on the Blackmagic Pocket 6k (not great on the rolling shutter side) - the director wants it to be handheld, so I wanted to ask if you have any ideas on how to go about it. I'm thinking of an easyrig but looking for more ideas. Using an even wider lens would be a good idea as well, but our first choice is to keep it at 28mm (Leica).   

We need to keep the handheld look but not for the viewer to become too dizzy.

 

 

I think your best bet would be a shoulder rig, a small light one but still a shoulder rig; ENG news crews do it all day long and it looks great and very natural. If it's a walk and talk you will want the camera pretty high up to focus on the speaker's face and its even less stable like that when walking. I think your director doesn't know just how hard it is to walk with a camera without IBIS or a gimbal.  Even with IBIS its still tough and IBIS introduces new problems like IBIS wobble.

Another option is to use a gimbal but turn the stiffness way up, the nice thing about that approach is that you can dial in how much "natural" movement you want. You could show the director some sample footage like that. You could also use the gimbal but deliberately not use the ninja walk; stiffer settings combined with deliberately poor form will look a lot like handheld footage but not so bad that its unusable. 

Another option that I tried (but didn't like) was using a monopod like a glidecam; that looked very natural and handheld and the footage was still useable but its just not comfortable to use for very long and for me, keeping the horizon level was the hardest part. A final option is like others have said, just make your rig as heavy as possible and hope for the best. 

Below is how I rigged my S5 when I had it, I could briefly sit the V-Mount battery portion on my shoulder for eye level interviews or I could tuck the V-Mount portion under my arm and hold the handles for short walks and it was pretty stable. The biggest problem was seeing the screen, an ENG camera with an eyepiece would have worked better for this type of setup. 

 

 

[MrSMW]

Taught against a neck strap or any form of strap.

In fact a better option than the next strap is the twin shoulder harness such as the Holdfast Moneymaker (other brands available).

Simply attach both straps to the camera and push the camera away from you and keep your arms locked and then make any movements with your entire body, not hands.

Or there is the tripod ‘trick’ where you mount the camera on a tripod and then place a leg over each shoulder with the 3rd leg shortened and into your chest.

Both work very well with non-stabilised bodies or lenses.

[bjohn]

Doesn't the Pocket 6K also have gyro stabilization? Maybe that in combination with some of the other options here would work...from what I've seen, handheld footage with gyro stabilization still looks handheld, but without all the micro-jitters.