whitelens said:
I have tried the DJI lens adapter with Tiffen lens filters. . . and the gimbal could not hold it up. I just bought Zeikos filters, and they do seem less expensive . . So I hope to try this out this weekend. I still think it will all be to heavy for the current gimbal to hold up without going to "high" power settings on the actual gimbal.
THOUGHTS?
I've been thinking about this - I've still got three weeks 'til my DE gimbal arrives so there's plenty of time for navel gazing and back-of-envelope calculations. The problem doesn't seem to be weight as much as balance - right now the DE rig is set up so that the center of gravity of the FC200 is right along the axis of the motor. With that alignment, the motor hardly has to do any work to keep the camera in position, there's no torsional force along the axis of the gimbal motor when the camera is at rest (in any orientation). Add weight to the front of the camera and now there's
always a downward force on the motor's axis that needs to be counteracted continuously (again, no matter what the orientation of the camera - other than straight down)
Solution? Add an equal amount of weight to the back of the camera so again it's balanced front-to-back. The motor will need to do more work to change the pitch of the unit because the heavier camera has a higher rotational inertia but when the camera's being held steady (in any orientation) the motor won't have to do any more work than if there were no filter and counter-weight.
Ahh, but there's a minor problem that's easy to overlook. There are actually two axis of freedom (we actually knew that
) and two motors to consider. If you look at the DE gimbal head-on, you'll see the camera has been moved a bit to the right of the Phantom's center axis to counteract the weight of the pitch gimbal motor. Adding more weight (filter + counterweight) to the camera moves more weight to the right of the front-rear axis which means the roll gimbal in the back will now have to be constantly fight the forces causing the camera to droop downwards to the right. Solution? Add even
more weight to the left side of the rig to counterbalance the heavier FC200.
At some point this gets pretty silly as we keep adding more and more weight to the system :geek: It might not take much added weight to counterbalance the filter on both axes but only testing will tell. Fortunately, as a golfer I have easy access to lead "weight tape" (
http://www.amazon.com/Gram-Lead-Tape-Strips-Adjustment/dp/B0026ECYV6) which will make experimentation pretty easy. If it ends up being more complicated than I hoped, the decision is quite simple - I'd much rather have a 2 axis gimbal for stabilization more than I want a polarizer to enhance the camera's image.
