Why is an iron bar connected to the lower part of this camera? What does it do?

This thing is called camera stabilizer, which is mainly used to ensure the stability of high-quality pictures when moving.

When walking or running, your body will shake violently with each step. In most cases, you won't notice the shaking, because the human brain will automatically adjust the information received through the eyes; When a visual image is consciously formed, the human brain will eliminate this directionless movement.

Some cameras have built-in adjustment devices, which can make up for the shortcomings caused by jitter, but they can't compete with the natural and stable system in the human brain. The photographer's actions will still have a great influence on the photos taken.

For some plots, the shaking and shaking in the hand-held shooting lens have a good effect, such as the chaotic chase scenes in horror movies or realistic documentaries; But in most cases, former producers rarely use hand-held photography. If a scene needs to move the camera, the staff will tie the camera to a trolley (a wheeled platform that can move along a path or a smooth floor). Many plots can get good results through the cooperation of trolleys, but they have certain limitations. For example, you can't use a stroller to go up stairs, and it's not easy to bypass obstacles. Not to mention using it on uneven ground.

In the early 1970s, a commercial director and producer named Garrett M. Brown began to study another stable system to avoid the above limitations. Brown intends to build a highly portable device to separate the camera from the photographer and improve the balance of the camera to reduce vibration and shaking.

1973, Brown invented a very simple but innovative machine, thus achieving this goal. Brown stabilizer (later renamed camera stabilizer) can stabilize the camera with only the following three main components:

1 Equielastic spring alloy shock absorber with joint

A specially designed balance assembly is used to support the camera equipment.

3 an auxiliary vest

Shock absorber arm and vest

The hinged arm of the camera stabilizer looks like a spring-loaded rocker light. It consists of two parts, which are connected by a rotating hook. Each part is a parallelogram: it consists of two metal rods with two metal terminators at both ends. Like any other parallelogram, these metal rods will remain parallel (or almost parallel) to each other no matter where the damping arm is located. Because the terminators at both ends are firmly fixed at both ends of the parallel rod, when the shock absorber arm swings up and down, it will remain motionless. In this design, if you want to connect a lamp to a terminator like a rocker desk lamp, the lamp will always illuminate in the same direction when you move your arm up and down. Similarly, the camera connected to the terminal also points in the same direction. However, in order to keep the camera balance assembly completely balanced, it will be fixed to the shock absorber arm using a freely movable universal joint. The weight distribution of the balance assembly itself can keep the camera balanced. In the original design of the camera stabilizer, the metal rod was directly connected with the spring. In the current camera stabilizer design, although the function is the same, the connection is more ingenious. You can take a closer look at the picture below to understand how this system works.

The metal rod at the lower part of each damping arm is actually a hollow cylinder with a large spring ring inside. The spring is fixed on the pulley, and the pulley is connected with the cable reel through two metal cables. The cable reel is connected with the reverse terminator through cables. In this structure, the spring pulls the pulley to rotate the cable reel, thereby pulling the cable connected to the reverse terminator. In this way, under the tension of the spring coil, the parallel metal rods will move to counteract the gravity of the camera.

The advantage of this system is that you can easily adjust the spring tension to meet the needs of different weight loads. The cable can move up and down at the terminator. Pulling the cable upward can turn the cable reel and pull the pulley closer, thus expanding the spring and increasing the pulling force that can counteract gravity.

This articulated shock absorber arm is mainly used as the shock absorber of the camera balance assembly. When the photographer moves, the base of the shock absorber arm also moves. The rest of the spring system responds according to the weight of the balance assembly. The camera can change direction smoothly without violent vibration. The shock-absorbing arm also releases the photographer's hands-the shock-absorbing arm is directly connected to the vest, so the photographer does not have to hold the camera's balance assembly with his hands. So you can concentrate on positioning the camera and take the best photos.

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