Smartphone Gimbal Stabilizer, Auto Tracking GimbOWL

dball wrote: »

Basically looking for a better version for someone who likes to dance and therefore would need the smart tech to follow them around the room in fast paced dancing.
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I don't want to go all mad and spend alot of money but if anyone has seen anything similar in the 50 - 75 area could you share a link here please.

Dancing is incredibly demanding in terms of camera work, so I'd be very surprised if you'd find anything even remotely useful in that price-range. It's an area I've explored, both as the dancer and the camera-man, and if the dancer is "good", the camera-man needs to be "excellent" and have "really impressive" kit to work with.

It might sound outlandish, but dancing is essentially an extreme sport, with the dancer travelling at up to 30kmh, braking hard and reversing almost as fast. With the added movement of skirts/scarves/arms/legs, it's incredibly difficult for cheap tracking software to know what's part of the subject and what's part of the background, which is where systems like Hawk-Eye come in. Add three zeros to your budget. :eek:

For home video purposes, it's a lot easier - and more effective - to use a static camera and turn off autofocus! ; better still, use two cameras. That'd give good results for reference purposes.

If you're looking for footage for dramatic (or instructional) purposes, there's really no alternative to having a dedicated camera operator. One will do, if the performance is carefully choreographed and can be repeated several times; if it's on the fly ... well, most events I'd go to have at least three, often five cameras* recording simultaneously - and that's just for YouTube. :pac:

(*off the shelf DSLRs with decent lenses)