The following is the actual email
we received from a client who had looked at several similar products, bought
one, and then saw our STEDDIEPOD.
Michael
Buday wrote:
Hi Eddie,
Michael Buday here. We met at HDEXPO
where I immediately bought one of your STEDDIEPODS for my son. First of all, let
me say without hesitation that the STEDDIEPOD is a fantastic product – which is
something I don’t often say about ANY product.
A little perspective
here:
About 18 months ago, I bought my son
(who is now in film school) a GLIDECAM 2000 PRO – which I paid about $400.00 for
(not including the vest which set me back even more). When the GLIDECAM arrived,
I was expecting to spend a couple of hours getting it setup and balanced before
letting my son loose with it, but two hours quickly turned into an entire
evening – which in turn carried on into the following morning.
Now, I’m a pretty handy guy. I’ve been
a professional editor in Hollywood and London for over 20 years; I’ve run camera
on several occasions and I do all my own electrical and plumbing repairs in my
home. So, when I say I’m handy – I am – but setting up that GLIDECAM proved to
be one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve ever had with a piece of video
gear. I found the counterweight system employed by this model of Glidecam to be
crude and extremely difficult to get right – despite the thorough instructions
that come with the product. Further, once I FINALLY manage to balance the
contraption with my son’s VX-2000 camcorder, the slightest change in camera
weight or orientation would throw the whole thing off again – and I mean
ANYTHING would throw it out of whack (different battery, opening the LCD
monitor, plugging in a cable into the headphone jack of the camera
–anything!).
Even after we got the GLIDECAM setup,
making it do what we wanted it to do was extremely difficult. Now I realize
that operating a camera stabilization system is no panic and it requires a lot
of practice – but this was ridiculous! Once the camera was in motion, stopping
any movement of the gimbal in a smooth manner was next to
impossible.
I won’t bore you with anymore details
about the GLIDECAM, but our overall impression was that it just wasn’t worth the
cost.
So, after seeing your demo of the
STEDDIEPOD at HDEXPO, I realized that I’d finally found a versatile and
inexpensive camera stabilization system that was easy to setup and
learn.
I brought the STEDDIEPOD home the night
of HDEXPO and decided to give it a whirl right away. I was amazed – first of
all, the build quality is outstanding. Secondly, it took me all of ten minutes
to:
- Unpack the STEDDIEPOD
- Mount the tripod plate to camcorder
- Mount the camera to the tripod head
- Unfold the three stabilization legs
- Balance the STEDDIEPOD
That was it. I immediately fired up the
camera and within about 20 seconds, I was easily producing steady shots while
moving all the around the house. Within half an hour of bringing STEDDIEPOD
home, I’d unpacked it, set it up and mastered it!
The next day my son came home from
college for the weekend. I showed him the STEDDIEPOD and within 5 minutes he was
on his rollerblades testing the system out while flying the down the street. Cut
to one week later; he’s now using it everyday on a film he’s shooting and says
it was the best investment we’ve (I’ve) yet made (other than the camera that
is).
So what more can I say? The product is
beautifully built, cleverly designed and it just plain works out of the box.
Plus, it’s extremely versatile. In fact, the expensive Bogen tripod I bought
looks like it’s going to be used less and less now that the STEDDIEPOD is part
of my son’s camera gear.
It was great meeting you and thanks so
much for a great product!
Sincerely,
Michael Buday
