Andrew Gene

DIY HD DSLR rig with counter weight and shoulder pad.

So after banging my head against the wall working on a few different variations on a shoulder mount I ended up going with the most simple, cheapest, easiest solution.  That probably makes sense.

velcro shoulder pad

The shoulder pad is made from heavy twill and has a firm foam insert.  I used this dense white foam that they use to pack electronics (not the squeaky kind which would be bad for the audio).  The whole thing is held in place snugly with velcro in between the shoulder bar bridge block and a the supporting screw before the counter weight screw.

Counter weighted shoulder mount

I used a post to mount the weight so that I could clamp anything in between the weight bolt.  Right now I’m using a couple of .5 kilo weights.  They seem to help a bit but I think that I’ll weigh everything and figure out what the counter weight should be.

I’m also going to add a hand tightened bolt instead of the Allen key bolt so that it can be swapped up easily without a tool.