The Glidecam Smooth Shooter is a body mounted camera stabilization system designed for cameras weighing up to 6 pounds when used with the Glidecam 2000 Pro, or for Cameras weighing from 4 to 10 pounds when used with the Glidecam 4000 Pro. The Glidecam Smooth Shooter system will allow you to walk, run, go up and down stairs, shoot from moving vehicles and travel over uneven terrain without any camera instability or shake.
The Smooth Shooter system works by isolating your body's motion from your camera, while your camera is balanced in a relatively motionless and isolated state. The Smooth Shooter's Support Arm can be boomed up and down, as well as pivoted in and out, and side-to-side. It is the combined booming and pivoting action of the Support Arm, which isolates your motions from the camera in a way that creates smooth camera footage.
The Dyna-Elastic Support Arm incorporates more than twenty precision radial bearings within its machined T6 aluminum structure. The placement and implementation of these double-shielded bearings produce minimal friction and allow the Support Arm to pivot and boom very smoothly, and with virtually no noise.
Two high-carbon alloy, extension springs are employed within the Support Arm's hardcoat anodized exo-skeletal shell. Utilizing class three levers, the energy of the extension springs act upon internal Fulcrum Points, and provide the Support Arm with its lifting power. The spring tension is field adjustable and allows for varying camera weights.
The system's proprietary spring Inter-X-Change system makes the installation and removal of the springs quick and easy. The Support Arm can be setup and used in either a one-spring mode, or a two-spring mode. In the one-spring mode, the Support Arm can hold a total combined camera and hand-held stabilizer weight of 9 pounds. In the two-spring mode, the Support Arm can hold a total combined camera and hand-held stabilizer weight of 18 pounds.
A key design feature of the Support Arm is Glidecam's Light-Force technology. It literally means that only a "light" force or effort is required by the operator to hold the arm at any given position, or to boom the arm up and down. With this feature the operator is provided with the optimum amount of camera buoyancy or float.