Hey Jason, Thanks for the compliments.

The steady cam device we are using is the Glidecam HD4000. This is our third steady cam type device and definitely my favorite.

Our first was the Glidecam 2000. It looked homemade and was a pain to balance 100% accurately. It worked well once you got it balanced but I always hated the comments "Wow thats pretty ingenious of you" with a slight snicker because of the homemade look of the device.

The second was the Steadycam Merlin. AWESOME AWESOME RIG. Its drawbacks were that it needed to be balanced 100% perfectly to work great and it could not handle a heavier camera setup. A positive was that the overall unit was really light but this is also a negative as any kind of wind or slight mishandling of the unit would make it tip and you literally had to stop and restart the shot after it would start tipping.

The Glidecam HD4000 is much improved over its sibling the Glidecam 2000/4000. Its much easier to balance. Looks much more professional. Only drawback is that its heavy. I have decent upper body strength which makes it not that big of a deal but even with my strength after a minute or so with this thing I start feeling the weight bearing down on my wrist and shoulders. Im sure you could make the entire combo lighter than I have mine, as I balanced with one of our big batteries and also a wide angle lens. With it being a little on the heavy side though I can operate it and not have to worry about slight mishandling or wind tipping it to the point that it ruins a shot.

Hope this helps!!!

If you could please email me with your other question. I feel an open forum isn't the right place to discuss that.