A few years ago I was out on St.Kilda for a shoot (the middle of nowhere) and I needed lots of low down moving shots. So, I brought my Devin Graham Signature Series Glidecam. It cost a lot of money so assumed that it was of the very best quality. However, as I was grabbing my first shot the gimbal collapsed on me. With no time to work it out, I clicked it back in and just scrapped the low down shots that I wanted. In essence, the gimbal couldn’t take the weight of a GH4 camera.
When I got home I reached out to the guys at Glidecam (with photos of the issue) and they replied with a note about a completely different issue and that I need to buy a new part.
I feel I should first mention that most of my time is spent animating/editing so the Glidecam wasn’t really classed as ‘broken in’ yet. It was, however, out of warranty by a month or so. So having been told that I need to buy a new part I decided to just repair myself.
If you are having a similar issue, please watch the video above try and fix yourself.
You need:
and that’s it. Please do take care when replicating the steps above. If you get the threadlock into the ball bearings at all it will no longer work.
Good luck!