How to Rock Steady with Smooth Tracking Video

Tracking shots of moving subjects reached a new level of smooth when cameraman Garrett Brown invented the Steadicam in 1975. The body-mounted stabilizer isolates the camera from the movement of the operator, allowing motion shooters to capture shake-free footage while walking, running and riding along with fast-moving subjects.

But in an era of tight budgets and schedules, multimedia wedding packages and on-the-fly production, using such a costly and cumbersome device at a wedding or other venue isn’t always practical. Operating a full-size Steadicam requires practice, as well as time to rig up and balance the camera, and even more modestly priced and sized stabilization devices can sometimes be too much for today’s shoestring budgets and fast-paced shoots.

To help you shoot better video for weddings and other clients, we asked six multimedia pros how they achieve smooth tracking shots without using commercial stabilization gear.

KEEPING STEADY
The cheapest and lightest stabilization gear is no gear at all. Some shooters develop techniques for holding the camera and moving with it to eliminate much of the shakiness associated with handheld footage. “The best thing I would do is practice smoothing out your walk,” recommends Seattle-based multimedia journalist and producer Tim Matsui. “Hold the camera a little out from your body, be kind of flowing in your arm motions, and realize that you’re going to translate your body motion into the shot.”

Eric Seals of the Detroit Free Press has used a variety of camera mounts, including some devices he’s designed and constructed himself. Photo © Eric Seals

Eric Seals, a multimedia journalist at the Detroit Free Press, compares his walking technique to the footwork of a marching band: “You have to put one foot in front of the other, but do it in a smooth, fluid, gentle way. You just kind of roll. And when I’m walking, I’m also controlling my breathing.”

While smooth footwork eliminates larger movements, the upper body can buffer the camera from more subtle shakiness. “I think of my body as a shock absorption tool,” says Boston Globe multimedia producer Darren Durlach. He absorbs minor vibrations by holding his arms away from his body and keeping his grip on the camera loose. “That keeps it from those tiny jerky movements,” he says.

Stephen Keller, a photographer for Southwest Airlines, likes to use a shoulder mount during video shoots. Photo © Stephen Keller

Stephen Keller, a photographer for Southwest Airlines, finds using a shoulder rig a happy medium between the stability of a Steadicam shot and the shakiness of a standard handheld shot, but when he’s shooting without a rig and wants a similarly smooth effect for a tracking shot, he relies on physical technique and one little accessory: his camera strap. Holding his arms down next to his body, he pushes the camera out so that the strap is taut. “You just push it so that it creates a natural resistance,” he explains. “That will keep the camera much steadier than if you’re just handholding it.”

Photo © Stephen Keller

SETTINGS AND COMPOSITION
Selecting the right camera settings and composition is also vital to achieving a smooth handheld tracking shot, mainly because it’s virtually impossible to adjust focus while shooting. Instead, the camera operator locks focus on the subject at the beginning of the shot, then maintains a constant distance from the subject while in motion to keep the focus sharp. Because it’s hard to maintain the distance precisely, having enough depth-of-field to allow for a little play is key. All of the shooters we spoke with stop down to at least f/5.6 for tracking shots when consistent focus is important.

In some cases, it can be a stylistic choice to open up to f/4 or even lower, and let the subject slip in and out of focus slightly. While that’s not usually a desirable effect for journalism, it can work well in commercial and editorial pieces. “I use that kind of thing in my work quite a lot,” says Rhea Anna, a Buffalo, NY-based commercial shooter. “It’s something I tend to like the look of.”

Shooting wide and maintaining a good amount of space around the subject can also help with both focus and steadiness by allowing camera operators to see the space they’re moving through without looking away from the viewfinder. It minimizes errors as well. “You don’t shoot tight when you’re walking with somebody,” Seals says. “The tighter you shoot, the more magnified your mistakes in walking become.”

Seals also cites another benefit of leaving some room around the subject during tracking shots: software stabilization tools such as SmoothCam in Final Cut and Warp Stabilizer in Premiere Pro can reduce minor camera shake in post, but using the software results in some cropping around the margins.

One camera setting that might seem more useful is built-in stabilization but, “you can’t really use it for tracking shots,” says Durlach. “As you move, it’s trying to stabilize it, and then it jerks back. It’s kind of a strange phenomenon,” he explains.

LENSES AND VIEWFINDERS
A wide lens is the obvious choice for tracking shots, since longer lenses amplify the effects of movement and vibrations. Canon’s 24-105mm zoom is a favorite among many of the shooters we spoke with. “For anyone doing video storytelling in newspapers, that’s the lens you want,” Seals says.

Having a clear view even when holding the camera at a low angle is vital for maintaining focus during a tracking shot, so many shooters use external camera-mounted monitors such as Marshall’s 5- and 7-inch models. For eye-level tracking shots, Matsui uses a Zacuto eyepiece to improve his view.

DO-IT-YOURSELF GEAR
Seals also uses low-budget DIY versions of commercial stabilization tools to shoot scenes when he knows in advance that a shoot will require smooth tracking shots. For less than $10, he made a rudimentary PVC pipe version of Manfrotto’s circular Fig Rig stabilizer. With his camera mounted in the center of the PVC ring, Seals holds the ring away from his body with both hands while walking to stabilize his shot. “I work at a newspaper, so we don’t have a big budget to buy something like that,” he explains. “A lot of things I use, I build and expense.” Seals points out that instructions for building homemade versions of many commercial video tools are available online, notably on YouTube.

Another makeshift stabilization tool that many photographers already have in their kit is a monopod. “You just collapse the monopod, and it becomes almost like a Steadicam,” explains Brad Horn, a multimedia journalist at The Washington Post. “It’s got a handle on it if you’ve got a video head.” Horn uses a monopod with a panning head and a stabilizing foot that allows him to brace the pod securely against his body. “You can use your left hand to hold the panning handle and your right hand to hold the feet,” he says. He likes the flexibility of being able to switch quickly from using the monopod as a tracking shot stabilizer to extending it to the ground for static shots and panning.

Still, even a monopod can be too much of an encumbrance during fast-moving journalistic shoots. As Seals explains: “If the person I’m doing a story on is doing something, and all of a sudden he does something else that requires a different view, I can’t tell him or her to stop and wait for me to take my monopod off and get on the ground, because then I’m influencing the situation. In journalism we have ethics, so we can’t do that.”

At the end of the day, one of the best reasons to become adept at improvising and using physical stabilization techniques has to do with another kind of stability—financial stability. As Matsui observes, “A lot of younger photographers are prone to investing in equipment, and then they carry it as a liability for a long time.” His advice? “Do not go into debt over gear unless you can pay it off in a short amount of time, with the job that you have or are in the process of finishing. I can’t emphasize that enough.”

A longer version of this piece originally ran in our sister pub, PDN, in May 2014.

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