Back in the spring, I needed some filming rigs for my DSLR cameras to use while shooting video. If you’ve used DSLR’s for video, you know stability is a bitch, and the options out there are outrageously expensive. Price aside, I couldn’t even find exactly what I needed. Fortunately, I’ve got a shop in the garage, so I whipped up my own rigs out of steel. I’m no master welder, but I made it work. After I figured out what I wanted out of them, they were relatively easy to make, so I put them up for sale in the store on the snowboard site, YoBeat. The people who need them are finding them, which is nice.  We’ve not marketed them as stabilizers, but sold them as Back Scratchers and Coat Racks that happen to work as camera stabilizers, in order to avoid any sort of patent related drama with manufacturers of the really expensive shit. “Hey, I don’t know. It’s a damn coat rack, but it holds my camera just fine.” They’re easy to make and we can sell them to the skate/snow/BMX market cheap ($30 vs. hundreds of dollars) to those who need something affordable, and not lose money on our end. While they’re not as flexible as some of the really expensive systems, I made what I needed for my work, and made them available. Unfortunately, selling them means somebody has to make them, and I’ve been super busy, so I haven’t really pushed them, posted about them, or advertised them. But some filmers have caught onto them anyway.  People keep asking me about them, so here they are. You can see how I use them, with cameras mounted after the jump. I’ve added simple bicycle grips to mine, which is easy and cheap should you choose to do the same. If you want to buy a coat rack (works for normal up to the eye shooting) or a back scratcher (works for low angle, fisheye follow-filming), head over to the YoBeat store. Both are steel construction.

Back Scratcher shown mounted to a camera, with bicycle grip added.

Coat Rack shown mounted on camera, with bicycle grips added.