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Glide Gear Stabilizer Review
  • Just got the Glide Gear Stabilizer and thought I would do a quick review. It's modeled off the Steadicam Merlin design. The build quality is very good. Bottom line - it works, and for $73 on amazon, it's pretty cheap. I did some test shots walking up and down stairs, as well as around the house, moving forward at times, panning at times...and it's smooth. It definitely removes all the microshakes you might get when trying to walk. I watched their 3 minute YouTube video which gives instructions on balancing, and spent 5-10 minutes working on balancing my GH2 with lens, lens adapter, and small rubber hood, and it was fairly easy to achieve nice balance. By the 3rd test shot, I had gotten the hang of it. A bit heavy after awhile, but nothing too bad, and I suppose that's normal for stabilizers that require you to operate it with one hand. At $73 it's a good deal, and with a reasonable amount of practice, I believe you could achieve some very smooth moving shots.

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  • Yeah, that's the exact one I got.

  • Test video!

  • @ Vitaliy_Kiselev The compact steadicam we have in p-v deals looks REALLY well designed and price seems good. That would be my upgrade path once budget allows.

    @tinyrobot I'll try to get outside and put a test video together in a day or so.

  • @matt_gh2 with your review you gave hope I can manage to balance my own Opteka SteadyVid Ex mkII stabilizer (which is very similar to the one you own). I can't seem to be able to get rid of the rolling movement :(

  • @Mike_C What do you mean by rolling movement?

  • When flying my GH2, the stabilizer tends to lean left and right (sorry if my English is not perfect). I used rolling movement like in this: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/roll.html

  • @Mike_C Edit: Got that reversed. Manual says that if you have pendulum effect problem, problem may be too much weight on bottom. Maybe try reducing the amount of weight on bottom.

    Maybe try calling Opteka.

  • Thanks for the tip, Matt, I'll try that. Calling Opteka is out of the question since I live in Italy (and they don't have skype support afaik).

  • @Mike_C if you go to glidegear.net you can download manual which has balancing tips plus a link to their YouTube video I used to balance mine. Good luck

  • Thanks again Matt. The manual is very useful. I'll finally manage to tame the beast :)