PDA

View Full Version : Anyone Ever Shoot Handheld w a Kenlab Gyro?



Frank Petronio
7-Sep-2010, 14:07
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
7-Sep-2010, 14:37
they look nice, doubt i'd ever do it tho

Drew Wiley
7-Sep-2010, 14:58
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
7-Sep-2010, 15:05
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
7-Sep-2010, 15:08
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
7-Sep-2010, 15:49
You could buy or rent a steadicam (http://steadicam.com/) 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
8-Sep-2010, 13:24
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.
8-Sep-2010, 14:06
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
8-Sep-2010, 14:28
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 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceleration) and jerk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerk_%28physics%29) 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
8-Sep-2010, 17:06
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.

George Stewart
8-Sep-2010, 18:38
I own and have shot with a KS-8. The limits of my shooting have been with a DSLR from a self-flown aircraft. The system is clearly better than a stabilized lens alone. Because, time on station is typically short and costly, when flying, a digital capture system is recommended - for efficiency. I also believe that a MF digital camera would give results equal to 4x5 and perhaps 8x10 when altitude is sufficiently high. A gyro-stabilizer is highly recommended when shooting without a tripod in a situation where the photographer is moving.

Jim C.
8-Sep-2010, 20:37
What it does, is decrease the amount of acceleration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceleration) and jerk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerk_%28physics%29) 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.

Just as you stated, the Steadicam will smooth acceleration and jerk, but that's for moving camera
motion picture shots, I don't see the effectiveness of it used with a LF camera and long exposures

I'm sure the Steadicam will work fine at shutter speeds of 1/60 or more with LF Camera, 1/60 is I believe the normal
shutter speed for motion picture cameras, but I still don't see it being useful at slower speeds
on LF still camera, if you have a Steadicam rig with a LF camera on it and you're shooting say at
1/8 sec. and you're a bit unsteady there is no way that I can see the resulting shot not have some blur in it.

Besides that, inserting the film holder and removing the dark slide would probably throw your composition off :D

Bruce Watson
9-Sep-2010, 07:53
...if you have a Steadicam rig with a LF camera on it and you're shooting say at 1/8 sec. and you're a bit unsteady there is no way that I can see the resulting shot not have some blur in it.

Some blur, almost certainly. But considerably less blur than if you handhold that same camera making that same shot. Because your muscles are twitching and firing as you try to hold the camera steady on target, and the constant changes in direction will exhibit higher acceleration and jerk than you'd get with the steadicam. Depending on the camera and photographer, perhaps considerably higher.

You don't have to believe me. It's easy enough to test and prove it for yourself. Almost all film/video supply houses have steadicam rigs for rent. If you ask nicely on a slow day, they might let you run your experiment in their building for free, or nearly so.

And I agree with Richard Mc -- I'd love an opportunity to see what a steadicam and a 5x4 could do at a horse race. I'll bet (yes, I meant to say that ;-) the results could be quite nice.

Bruce Watson
12-Sep-2010, 08:49
I'm sure the Steadicam will work fine at shutter speeds of 1/60 or more with LF Camera, 1/60 is I believe the normal
shutter speed for motion picture cameras...

Looked this up just to find out. Turns out that the "normal" shutter speed for a motion picture camera is 1/48th. That is, twice the frame rate of a 24 fps camera. This is also called a 180 degree shutter. I think this comes from a rotating shutter that leaves the film uncovered for 180 degrees of its rotation. Speeds slower than this, down to "no shutter" or 360 degrees, or 1/24th, result in "too much blur" and very fast shutter speeds (say, 1/125th and up) result in "too little blur" which makes the film look "stroboscopic" and jerky. Remember, the point of all this is for the individual frames to work together to make a pleasing motion picture. Therefore some blur in the individual frames is almost a requirement.

They typically use aperture to control DOF, but are sensitive to diffraction limited sharpness. They have to be -- putting an image from 35mm film on a 40 foot wide screen is a huge enlargement! Their diffraction limit occurs around f/8 for 35mm film cameras, and video cameras with capture devices around the same size.

Between limited shutter speeds and limited apertures, cinematographers have less control over the light hitting their sensors than we do. Their answer is neutral density filters which lets them decrease light to the film/sensor without having to either raise shutter speed or decrease aperture size. Many of the expensive digital machines come with two or three internal ND filters which should tell you something about how often this tool is used.

I had not realized just how little wiggle room there is in cinematography. Makes me glad to be an LF photographer. I've spent so many years feeling more restricted in what I can do compared to smaller formats. It's odd then to find that I'm less restricted than the cinematography world.

Cinema certainly seems to be a different world from still photography, and LF in particular.

Frank Petronio
12-Sep-2010, 09:17
That's why things are so heavily lit, they have to control their contrast ratios and open up those shadows, unless you want gritty crap like the Blair Witch Project.