Anyone Ever Shoot Handheld w a Kenlab Gyro?

[Frank Petronio]

Just stirring the pot, back in the 80s Neil Selkirk (Diane Arbus's printer) shot a with the small KenLab Gyro and a Rolleiflex, managed one-second handheld exposures, I always thought that would be awesome with a Crown Graphic or Rollei too.

So has anyone else ever actually done it? With large format?

They are available for rental for video, aerial photographers in big markets. The smallest one only costs $1500 or so. Kind of like VR that actually works....

[Ash]

they look nice, doubt i'd ever do it tho

[Drew Wiley]

My brother did it with a Technika 4x5 for handheld shots in a dim factory where the
heavy machinery created too much vibration on the floors to use a tripod. I was fairly
amazed that the shots were sharp enough for quality advertising purposes.

[bob carnie]

I want to shoot low angle from a boat up here in Ontario, and I always thought a gyro would be good for large format rather than a twenty foot water proof tripod.

All I need to do is buy the pontoon boat first, I will be interested to see where this thread goes.

[BarryS]

An architectural photographer who does a lot of aerial work let me try his Kenlab Gyros. Yes, that's gyros plural (not the spit roasted lamb and beef!) because you need two units to stabilize both rotational axes. The rig is heavy and kind of crazy to manipulate--and that was with a medium format camera. I passed on the chance to pick up a couple units cheaply, because it seemed like more of a distraction unless you have a specialized application. Fun to play with, though.

[Bruce Watson]

You could buy or rent a steadicam of some level probably. If they can handle a video camera, they surely can handle a view camera. Would probably work best with a press camera of some sort though -- I don't see lots of ground glass work (precision focusing, tilts, shifts, etc.) happening like this.

Scroll down on that page and look at the picture of the guy with the full vest system. Puts all the weight on your hips like a good backpack does. With something like that you could no doubt use a 10x8.

[Ivan J. Eberle]

Frank, I know a fellow who can manage 1/4 and 1/2 second exposures with a Blad--that's without a Kenyon Gyro. (admittedly he also shoots match rifles and consistently wins at a national level, though.)

I can manage to handhold down to about 1/8s with a Pentax 645N and SMC-A 35mm f/3.5 for some rather nice effects, like the other day following a trio full-curl bighorn rams in Glacier NP...

I've also successfully shot a resting bobcat in shade at 1/15s off my knee with a Nikkor 200-400VR at ~300mm (and Velvia 50. Now I'd bump the ISO on my D300). VR works so well (mine lens is a VR v.1.0, incidentally) that a lack of subject motion becomes the major determining factor to sharpness.

Personally, I wouldn't screw around with an old-school gyro for still work nowadays. (And even for video, VR technology is pretty amazing).

[Jim C.]

Bruce, not sure that a Steadycam is going to work with a still camera,
Garrett Brown designed them solely for motion pictures to smooth out moving hand held shots.
The mechanism is counterbalanced springs that basically zero out the weight of the motion
picture camera, so the camera 'floats' in the same position. He demonstrated it on air during
an Oscar telecast years ago, jogging in place with a fully loaded ENG camera, the resulting image
had a floatiness to it but far better if he did it without it.
With a LF camera all it's going to do is make the images as blurry as if you just hand held it,
especially with long exposures.

[Bruce Watson]

Bruce, not sure that a Steadycam is going to work with a still camera,
Garrett Brown designed them solely for motion pictures to smooth out moving hand held shots.
The mechanism is counterbalanced springs that basically zero out the weight of the motion
picture camera, so the camera 'floats' in the same position. He demonstrated it on air during
an Oscar telecast years ago, jogging in place with a fully loaded ENG camera, the resulting image
had a floatiness to it but far better if he did it without it.
With a LF camera all it's going to do is make the images as blurry as if you just hand held it,
especially with long exposures.

What it does, is decrease the amount of acceleration and jerk in the motion. For those not familiar with the concept of jerk, it's a component of motion that's really uncomfortable -- so much so that it's one of the big focuses in car suspension design. One reason modern cars have better "ride" then their predecessors is control of jerk -- and it's one reason that, say, a BMW or an Lexus "feels better" than an entry level car. And it shows up in hand holding a camera as your muscles twitch back and forth trying to hold the camera on target.

There's no reason to think that decreasing acceleration and jerk won't be just as effective with a still camera as it is with cinema cameras.

Will it be as good as an active image stabilization system in, say, a Canon "L" series lens? Not likely. But it should be better than hand holding, especially a big heavy LF camera.

[Richard Mc]

I too have thought about using a large format camera with a steadicam and/or gyros.

I am keen to get some LF panning type shots of galloping horses, racing cyclists and that sort of thing.

There are all sorts of mounts for steadicams, allowing direct attachment to motor vehicles, helicopters or dollies of various designs, so you could be moving the camera along at a similar speed to the subject, while minimizing camera shake.

Though the steadicam concept does not nullify all movement, I was thinking that with a still camera, anything that smoothes or dampens camera movement would allow a slower shutter speed than would otherwise be available.

I would be very interested if anyone has used a large format camera in this way.

Potentially, a flexible bellows would not cope with the movement, so I wondered whether a rigid design like a Fotoman 8x10" may be more suitable, or if a larger format was required, maybe a custom box-like camera made made from wood - in this case the "bellows" could be set to a particular subject distance and fastened so that nothing moves or shakes.

I did read about a steadicam operator who was also into still photography and I remember him saying that he found the lessons learned from still photography (composition, exposure etc) were very useful regarding his moving camera work. I'm pretty sure he used a DSLR on his steadicam, but it was long enough ago, that I would not remember the link. The way DSLRs are going, they will all also be "movie" camera soon.