Instructions for balancing the Wave:

Prep the camera build. Remove any large dovetail bases, try to get the build to be as symmetrical as possible. No need to make the camera super short, so keeping something like a rod baseplate on the base of the camera is okay, as long as it’s not a large “ARRI Dovetail” type of rod bracket – those are generally too tall!

Assess the build – is there a lot of gack on the top handle, like an MDR and a light ranger? Is the camera pretty low and sleek? If a lot of accessories are on the top, I’d start with one or no Blue Plates. If it’s a more streamlined camera build, I’d start with one or two. As you use the plates more, you’ll develop a sense for how many you may need.

Mount the Blue Plate(s) (if needed) between the dovetail and the camera base with the appropriate screws.

Pop the camera/dovetail/blue plate assembly into the Wave. Remove the power cable from the Wave (or keep your sled turned off), and unlock the Wave. 

The camera should sit relatively level. If it falls to either side, it is side-heavy, and you should correct any significant side heaviness before proceeding. This can be done by moving accessories around, or by using a counterweight on a Noga arm, for small differences.

Once it sits relatively level, now rotate the camera slightly to one side. It will either fall further off level, return to level, or stay there.

If it returns to level, the camera is bottom-heavy. You need to move weight upwards, either by moving accessories, moving a counterweight, or adding (or doubling up on) a Blue Plate.

If it falls further off level, it is top heavy, and you’ve overshot. Either move accessories, move a counterweight, or remove a Blue Plate.

If it stays where you put it, it is balanced.

Repeat this check across the range. The Wave’s drive has some friction to it, so sometimes it performs differently at different points in its rotational travel. If it’s balanced perfectly, it’ll stay exactly where it’s put at any angle. The Wave will perform well even if slightly out of balance, but the more bottom heavy a build is, the more “squirrely” your sled will behave, and the more side heavy the build is the more the motor will work, which isn’t good for it. So, no need to obsess and get it perfect if you’re in a rush, but it’s good to get as close as you can.

I’ve been using a Klassen for almost a decade now, so I think I may be able to chime in here and add a little of my thoughts, as one of their die-hard supporters. I always am of the camp of trying to find every kind of vest that will fit you, and letting your body decide what works for you. But on a less empirical and more theoretical level, here are a few thoughts…

I got the Klassen because simply I could not operate with a front mounted vest. I’ve never known myself to have “back issues”, but the front mounted vest gave me real problems. I’ve tried many a vest, ranging from the Model 2 vest I started with to ExoVests, and I’ve never found one I can comfortably fly with. My back muscles tense up immediately, and even flying a lightweight sled for a few hours in a single day of workshop teaching a couple of years ago was bad enough for me that my wife had to help me out of bed the next morning. For me, the Klassen vest was a survival technique. 

The primary difference between the Klassen and a traditional front-mounted vest is the reliance on your shoulders to carry weight. In the Klassen, you can actually unstrap the shoulder straps and the vest will still carry weight (though it’s not recommended to fly this way, obviously!). The straps serve to keep the vest from sliding down your body, or moving around on your hips when the weight shifts – they don’t carry much of the weight of the rig, only a few pounds. The weight holding up the rig is clamped directly into your hipbones, and transferred down into the larger muscles in your back. There is a small amount of force pushing at the top of your back to resist forward forces, but being mounted to a completely rigid structure allows that force to be small. What this all means is that the muscles in your back which must tense to keep your spine upright are significantly less taxed, and for me, that means I can operate.

The removal of those back muscles also tends to lead to an increase in longevity in the rig for many operators, and I’ve known that myself, at one point doing a continuous 4 hour event in the rig with a fully loaded sled without breaks. I’ve also flown incredibly heavy rigs, including an Arricam LT on the Wave with a 6×6 gyro on an M1, and had no issue handling the weight. Hell, Larry flew his insane double-Alexa rig on Hugo with a Klassen! 

As for how it changes your operating, this is the big thing I’ve taken away both from my testing and my talks with Larry – the Klassen is locked to your hips, and therefore anything you do with your hips will translate directly into the socket block. A traditional front mount vest is connected to your entire torso, so it is able to “average out” any hip movement. So, basically, if you walk carelessly with a front mount vest, you have a much better chance of your torso being relatively steady than your hips. That little bit of hip sway inherent to most people’s walk will translate through the arm at certain speeds, and it will lead to more sway and translational speed changes in your moves. So, if you have a front mounted vest, theoretically you can get cleaner work than you could with a Klassen. However, with some training, it is absolutely possible to do incredible work with the Klassen, as can be seen by some of the operators who wear it, including both Larry and Jim McConkey. I’d dare you to say that either of their work is “lacking performance” because of the vests they use.

Doorways. As is obvious, I am a larger man. My shoulders are wide, and my vest therefore is one of the larger ones Klassen has ever built (I believe my first harness was the 2nd largest they had ever made, if I remember right!). So, yes, I occasionally have had clearance issues with my vest. Mostly, these clearance issues involve the fact that I am now surrounded by a hard, solid, and at points even pointy bit of structure. Backing into a wall now leaves marks! Barely sliding through a doorway now takes off paint! For most people I’ve seen, the carbon arm sticks out about as far as their shoulder (even less than that for me), so that is less of an issue than the back of the harness being solid and sticking out several inches on your back. If you find yourself with your back against a wall often, the Klassen’s size in that regard may not be kind to you. And if you do have to do a shot squeezing your shoulders together or going sideways to fit through a door, the Klassen will probably cause issues. But I’ve had very few problems in my 9+ years with it.

But I will say this – with the Klassen, you can easily throw the rig out in front of you with out pain, which does make it very easy to get through tight spaces with the rig, or operate on the wrong side, or throw the rig around for super kinetic moves. I also do find that the arm curling around the front of the harness keeps it out of the way, allows for easier visibility of the monitor (a huge deal, and it seems insane to me how little I can see of the monitor every time I try on a front mount vest), and generally seems to work well.

There are a lot of factors at play here, as many have stated before (and I’m sure many will continue to state after me!). To move slowly with the Steadicam with any level of precision is actually quite difficult and one of the more difficult skills to master. There is an immense amount of physicality that must be mastered, including skills that aren’t trained anywhere else, and a lot of variation depending on how you operate and your equipment. 

I think there are 4 real issues that plague slow movements, and I’ll address them separately. 

First is vertical translation from the operators hips transferring through the arm. The truth of all arms is that there is a certain frequency that they can absorb the movement of. Almost any arm, no matter how rudimentary, can absorb the movement of an operator jumping up and down. But an arm with too much friction will transfer slower vertical movements into the rig. All arms have some degree of friction (unless you’re operating Steadicam inside of a physics textbook), so there will always be some speed of raise or lower that the arm will transfer into a vertical rise and fall of the sled. Because of the way a human’s hips rise and fall as they walk, you then sometimes will get a rise and fall of the camera as the operator shifts weight from leg to leg. There are many solutions to this – the exovest’s pivoting hip sections are one, the flat-hipped walk that many like Larry McConkey have mastered is another. This type of motion is accentuated by close foreground elements, as they will move far more than the background, and “give away” the movement. So eliminating foreground elements or finding a way to move past them elegantly can often make the difference between a usable shot and one that looks amateurish.

The next issue that can be visible is side to side sway. When humans transfer weight from one leg to the other, they must center their body over that leg to avoid falling down. Imagine standing on one leg off to the side – it doesn’t work! So, as we transfer our weight from one leg to the other, our torsos naturally tend to drift from side to side. You’ve probably noticed this in actors when doing closeups – with every step they tend to “wobble” from one side to another. Especially if doing a shot with any door frames or other “portals” within it, this side to side movement becomes obvious. The best way to work around this is to be gentle with how you swing your leg around, and to walk as if on a tightrope. By placing your front foot down directly in front of your back foot, you are able to avoid swaying to one side to balance yourself. This can be a difficult skill, but it is absolutely learnable. A great practice exercise for this is to string a rope between two stands at the height of some obvious point on your arm-side socket block, and then attempt to walk with the socket block tracing along the rope without going towards or away from it. Truly humbling to see how bad humans naturally are the first time we do that exercise! 

Third, we see “surging” in speed. This can be a really difficult one to break, and requires a ton of leg strength! When you want to walk slowly, you need to transfer the weight from your back foot to your front foot, then pick up your back foot and place it in front to repeat the cycle. The movement pattern this creates is: Fast (transferring weight to the front foot), Stopped (picking up back foot and bringing it around), Fast (transferring weight onto new front foot). What you must do therefore is transfer weight more slowly onto your front foot, and continue that movement forward while you swing your leg around. This can only be done with bent knees, as with locked standing knees it is impossible to keep your body moving forward once you’ve transferred weight. This is a quite difficult skill but can be learned with time and strength training.

And finally, I think that an often overlooked part of elegant slow moves is your gimbal hand. When doing slow moves, any errant panning or tilting or horizon deviations become even more obvious, because motion of faster shots can hide a lot of issues. You need to be even more delicate, even more still with your hand, and do even more to “send” the rig into pans and tilts rather than trying to micromanage the frame or point it directly. That can make a big difference in a shot feeling truly omnipotent, or feeling “operated”. 

As for backmounted vests, since I’m a user of one for about a decade now, I feel that I can chime in to say that a backmounted vest will not make your slow moves better, at least not directly. If anything, the fact that your socket block is now mounted much more solidly to your hips means that even more hip sway will be transferred to the socket block, and into the shot. However, the added stamina that I have from using a backmounted vest has allowed me to be more delicate at the end of shots, which is often where the slow moves are. In addition, the backmounted vest does allow you to push the rig away from your body without pain, which has allowed me to do small delicate moves without moving my feet, which eliminates a lot of these issues above. 

Let’s start with a little introductory physics here, about the most basic stabilizer arm you could make. All you have to do is put a spring from one corner of the arm to the other diagonal corner, and it will carry weight, and absorb shock. However, if you boom the arm up and down, the spring’s length changes significantly, and because of Hooke’s Law, that means that the force the spring puts out will change. So booming down requires much more force pushing down, and booming up requires you to pull upwards with a lot of force. This isn’t ideal, as nobody wants to have to work hard just to boom (not to mention that it could disturb the shot), so different designs have been made over the years to help alleviate this issue.

Early Steadicam arms, from the Model 1 through the model 3A, used 3 springs connected with cables. 2 of those springs ran along the bones of the arm, and one that went diagonally across the center. The tension of the arm was adjusted by screws at either end of the springs that pre-tensioned the springs. The force curve of these arms changed dramatically across their weight capacity – as you lightened the load the arm would carry, the arm required proportionally more force to boom. However, near the top of their weight range, they had a relatively gentle force curve, and required only a moderate amount of force to boom.

The term “iso-elastic” was invented by the folks at Steadicam to define a specific characteristic of a new design of arm – that the force curve of the arm was much more flat than previous designs of arms. The first arm to be termed iso-elastic (and result in the creation of the term) was the Master series arm, which didn’t have any controls for varying the force required to boom, but was always set to be “quite iso-elastic”.

The Master series arm was quite different in construction, in comparison to the 3A. It had 3 springs connected with cables, but they were arranged differently inside the arm, and rather than adjusting the lifting range of the arm by pre-tensioning the springs at their end, you adjusted the lifting range of the arm by changing where the end of the spring connected in the arm.

After the Master series arm, Steadicam continued to develop more arms that used the moving of the spring attachment points to adjust the arm’s tension. Notable examples include the Flyer, Pilot, Zephyr, and Aero arms. All of these arms use a spring across a shallow diagonal angle, and a vertical (ish) screw that adjusts the placement of one end of the spring to adjust the load capacity of the arm. This results in a relatively “iso-elastic” arm performance, with a force curve that is certainly usable. 

The G series arms took this a step further. The G series arms use a spring across a shallow diagonal angle, with a vertical adjustment screw that changes the position of one of the spring’s ends to adjust the load capacity, but it also adds a second control called “ride”. This control adjusts a series of cams and linkages inside the arm that change the spring’s end as the arm booms. The result is that you can dial in the amount of “iso-elasticity” you’d like, or in more accurate terms, you can make the arm’s force curve flatter or steeper. The mechanism that does this is both quite clever and quite complex, and still covered under patent. There are additional tricks in the G70’s arm design that also play a role, like the use of a second spring hidden inside the main spring, but the real magic of the arm is in its “Ride” mechanism. 

The PRO arm uses a very different mechanism, due to its use of compression springs, and is a whole different animal in terms of performance. It does not have any adjustment for the “ride” or “iso-elastic” setting, but is set at a quite pleasingly low amount of force for booming. 

So, I’ve gone through about 5 different revisions of wheels and stands at this point, and at this point I think I’m finally happy. 

I agree that wheels on the stand is primarily a luxury for the assistants, but I will make this point that an assistant of mine made to another operator recently – if your stand doesn’t have wheels, moving the rig around set now takes 2 people. I’ve seen a few people mention just taking the rig back to their cart, or carrying it themselves. I personally don’t want to have the rig on for a moment longer than I have to, especially when dealing with really heavy sleds and long takes. So wearing the rig while my stand is moved is a no-go for me. And as for my cart? This may be a particularly New York problem, but my cart is often halfway across the stage, if I’m lucky, or 10 floors downstairs outside of the building if I’m not. 

Without wheels, my stand suddenly is a lot more trouble to work around, and I’m less likely to be able to dock conveniently at the end of my shot. I often have the stand brought to one, the shot lined up for lighting on the dock, and then the stand flown away just as we roll and I pick it up. Again, not very possible without wheels, especially with less physically burly assistants. 

As for what I use, I have gone away from the American stand to a Matthews low-boy Combo stand, which I have heavily modified. The stand’s low legs mean that even an incredibly long rig, like a super post sled in low mode, still clears the legs. I had many issues in low mode with long sleds hitting the legs of the American stand while docking. The stand is also heavy enough and with a low enough CG that it’s never needed bagging or another set of hands holding onto it, even for dynamic balancing.

And as for wheels, I have gone back and forth between pneumatic wheels and non-pneumatics. Because I roll my stand around a lot, I was convinced that pneumatic wheels were necessary. However, most pneumatic wheels for stands are incredibly heavy, very large, and don’t roll terribly well. I even had Inovativ custom make me $1000 wheels which were 6” pneumatics, but they just didn’t push well enough, and once an assistant actually pushed my stand over because the wheels didn’t perform well enough. I’ve since gone back to 6” diameter hard casters. The ones I use now are casters for medical equipment, and they roll nicer than anything I’ve ever used before. The brakes are solid and lock the stand down absolutely, and unlock easily. The stand can be pushed easily and is in no danger of tipping over unless you hit a really big bump. Yes, there are a lot more little bumps my sled takes because the wheels are hard, but I’ve not found it to be an issue, apart from the occasional screw working its way loose. 

I think one of the biggest things is how you land into your lockoff, and how your body is positioned. If you’re not comfortable, in good form, and relaxed, you won’t be able to be really still in a locked off shot. I try to be aware of my approach into a lockoff, so that I’m preparing to land solidly in a comfortable place, with the rig close beside me, and my weight solidly on one foot (so that I’ll be able to adjust quickly and without weight transfer if needed). If you land in an awkward position – mid-step, mid weight transfer, rig way out in front of you or on the wrong side – it’ll be hard to physically hold that weight. Another thing is that I very rarely kiss off moves at all. Kissing off the rig means that you have to do a lot more mental work as you’re getting into a stop or starting up, and it means the rig can be farther out in front of you, or in an awkward position. I know it’s taught at all of the workshops (and it is a good technique for learning to separate your body from the rig), but my experience has been that you can get cleaner starts and stops without kissing off. My logic is that I’d always rather use more mass to accelerate and decelerate, to smooth out those movements. By tying the rig’s acceleration to my body’s acceleration, I can achieve more solid starts and stops, and it becomes easier to land in a comfortable position.

Here’s another thing to consider – in a lockoff, your instincts may tend to push you towards micromanaging the frame. Since you no longer are occupying large parts of your attention with moving or blocking, you will tend to over-focus on the frame, and constantly “chase” perfectly still frame edges. (Which in fact results in the opposite!) I find that I need to consciously slow down my thought process, and remind myself that the camera is fine. Larry McConkey taught me his technique for long lockoffs, which is to acknowledge that the frame is solid, and mentally “zone out”, just listening to the dialogue. Periodically, bring your attention back to the frame, and check that it’s still good. There will almost certainly be a little subconscious twitch of your hand when you do that, but you can hopefully time it so those check-ins are at inconspicuous moments. Then, a few lines before you will need to move again, you can focus back in, so you’re not late to move again. I’ve even had for a particularly long pause my dolly grip tap me on the side to let me know that we’re going to pick back up soon, in case I get lost in the dialogue. This technique does rely on you not having to make any adjustments during the lockoff, however, so it’s only useful if you’re doing a more architecturally based frame, or something like people sitting down where you know they won’t shift or move. 

Hopefully that will help. I think you’ll see the biggest improvement by getting more comfortable with your body and how you land. 

As for cleaner, I am not a fan of Acetone. I use a residue-free contact cleaner spray. I find that the spray action helps wash the gimbal clean, and contact cleaner is specifically designed as a degreaser and will wash out the oil from a bearing quite well. I spray out the gimbal bearing while spinning it at a relatively slow speed for 10-20 seconds (or until the spray makes my hands so cold that I have to stop!), and then dry the bearing between kimwipes. From that point on, I treat the bearing with basic clean room techniques – covering it with a kimwipe or other lint-free cloth (or even a clean piece of Tupperware) to prevent dust ingress at any moment that I’m not working on it directly. I bring the bearing back up to temperature using the heat of my hands, dry it again, and then use a single absolutely tiny drop of Triflow or other lubricant (I also have had great success with Mobil Velocite 6, a machine tool spindle oil for grinders, but it’s $150/gallon), and spin it gently until the sound of the bearing decreases and becomes consistent. Note – I do not add any more than that one drop of oil. The bearing, especially as one of Tiffen’s bearings, will still have some noise to it when lubricated in this minimal way, but that is in my experience normal. We are definitely starving the gimbal bearing of lubrication by only using one drop, but that is a trade off we make in the name of ultimate performance. 

Now test the bearing. If you hold the inner race still and give the outer race a spin, it should spin effortlessly and gently come to a stop in about a count of 3-5 seconds (depending on how fast you count). If it abruptly comes to a stop, or feels “notchy”, clean it again, as there is likely some debris in the bearing. If repeated cleanings do not solve a “notchy” or grinding feeling, the bearing may be damaged. Again, some noise or mild rumble is normal, but a prominent “click” or grabbing feeling in the bearing is not. If the bearing won’t spin up when giving it a flick, is it likely over lubricated. Clean it out and try again. This is definitely a procedure that may have to be redone at first, until you finally get a feel for how little lubricant you need. 

At this point, once you’re confident that you have the right amount of oil in the bearing, cover the bearing again, and use the contact cleaner on a paper towel or kimwipe to clean the pan case bearing housing, and to spray off the inner piece that the pan bearing rides on as well. (Both unanodized surfaces) also clean the threads that the gimbal assembles with. I have found significant gunk and oil in those threads which could migrate into your gimbal. Then use a finger with some oil on it to wipe down the bearing housings, and put a small amount of drops of oil into the threads. You can be a bit more generous in the threads, as they’ll retain oil. Always be mindful of dust and particles, as they can cause parts to stick together in assembly. Then reassemble the gimbal, and re-test. 

I apologize, but this will be a little long. The thing about the Wave as it comes to vibrations is that there are 2 main routes you need to look down – one involving the wave directly, and one involving the entire rest of your sled and the camera. I’m going to assume you have access to a camera of appropriate weight and a large monitor that you can hook up, so you may find it easiest to do this testing at a rental house.

The first thing to check is for vibrations in the Wave itself. First thing, with a camera on ideally a long stiff dovetail (I like the Zalex plate), unlock the Wave (it shouldn’t be  powered on) and grab the dovetail and the post and see if you can easily flex the dovetail up and down in relation to the sled. If you feel a “click” or you can see an obvious jump up and down of the moving section inside the rollers, then the rollers may need to be adjusted. You can also see if the rollers seem to be making good contact with the rails of the Wave. Not all 8 will make firm contact all of the time, but if all of them on one side are loose, or too many are loose, you could have wiggle coming from there. Some flex is normal, but it shouldn’t be an obvious pop. 

Second, if you see no obvious wiggle, I would now turn on the Wave, let it warm up (1-2 minutes after you get power to it, and unlock it), and put the sled up on the balancing pin. Now, roll the sled back and forth through the Wave’s motion, while looking at the picture from the camera on a large stationary monitor. If you see a “hitch” as you move the wave through the middle of its range, the motor power needs to be turned up. This can look like a vibration if you’re close to level with your sled as you can end up moving through the bump often. Also, if your motor power is too high, you could in theory get vibrations as you roll around, as the motor is trying “too hard” to stabilize the camera, and creating resonance. 

Apart from that, there is nothing on the Wave that creates vibration. So there go the easy parts. Most vibration issues people have with the Wave come from the fact that with the Wave you’re adding height and weight and moving the leverage of the camera 3” higher than it ever was. In reality, flying a normal 25-30 pound camera on the Wave is akin to flying a 45-50 pound camera normally, and it is much more prone to causing the sled to vibrate. Most sleds will have some degree of vibration, and even my sled which I have spent literally years tuning out every source of vibration can still have the occasional issue if I am not keeping things in top shape. This is a rabbit hole, so prepare to be going down this road for a while.

In my experience, the only real way to sort out micro-vibrations is to do things scientifically. So I’m going to walk you through my procedure for testing for vibrations with a specific camera build. More specifically, I’m going to walk you through how I found the vibrations that ended in me selling my PRO sled. 

First of all, get the same (or as close as possible) camera package you had on your sled when you noticed the vibrations. Please make it as similar as possible – weight being the same is highly important, as is vertical CG. A big heavy weight plate will not place the same stresses on your sled as a camera with a higher CG, and if the camera was the thing vibrating (or resonating with something else vibrating), you may never be able to find the source. Then, put on the rig, and stomp around as you walk around, while recording a clip. You will almost certainly see vibrations. If not, figure out what changed. Were you running? Were you moving sideways? Think about your body’s motions as they can make the arm clank into itself or the sled perform differently, or they may just make you step harder. 

Now that you have a baseline, your process needs to be to change one item at a time. Only one. For instance, turn off the Wave. Then repeat the test. Then move your camera so that the mounting point of the camera is right over the center post, and balance with the base of the sled, and repeat the test. (This would show that it is dovetail flex, an issue I’ve had with several dovetails). Then move your monitor and battery in, and maybe add some string or bongo ties to see if you can stiffen the monitor bracket, as almost all of them vibrate. Then test again. Add Velcro to your battery plates, then test again. Remove AKS from the camera, then test again. Remove the Wave, but keep the post the same length. Then shorten the post. Watch how each test affects what vibrations you see. 

With my rig (at the time a PRO 2), I found 2 huge issues. One was that the topstage wasn’t solid. The PRO DB2 is notorious for vibrations, even though nobody talks about it, and it was completely unusable with that camera weight and height. But the more significant issue (and not as easily fixable) was that my post was ringing. With the post fully extended, even with the Wave removed, the whole post would bend with every step and cause vibrations to come up into the camera. When I shortened the post, it all went away. I bought a new rig within the week, and sold that rig on. 

You probably don’t have to look that hard to find vibrations, however. Almost every camera build you get will vibrate. Try to prevent accessories held on via Velcro. Do not ever let them use a “paddle” for an MDR – they all bounce, especially if the MDR is Velcroed on. Dual Lock is solid if you use enough of it, but assistants dislike it because it’s harder to detach. Velcro is only good for things light enough to not vibrate. Make sure the camera battery plate has Velcro on it if you have a battery on it. Make sure the battery plate on the camera is solid and not vibrating. Check any mounting for Cinetapes as they’re notoriously badly mounted. Remove all AKS not needed off the body. Try to reduce the amount of stuff between the camera body and your stage. Use bongo ties to tie down anything that can wiggle. Sorry this is a lot, but it’s the thought process I go through the moment I see a camera body for Steadicam. 

Also, start looking at your monitor bracket on your sled. I have yet to find one out of the box that doesn’t vibrate. Even the Cam-Jam does, though it is less than most. The trick for seeing vibrations is this – put the rig on the dock, turn off the monitor, and look at something in the room on the reflection on the monitor’s surface. Now start tapping around on your rig. If the reflection flutters, the monitor is vibrating. With a properly built rig, this shouldn’t cause a huge transmission to the camera, but if something is loose on your camera build this can cause a sympathetic vibration and it can start resonating with something vibrating lower on your sled.

This is just a start, but I hope it gives you some ideas on how to troubleshoot. Let me know if you have any questions!