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  Camera Mounts
The type of shots required have a considerable influence on the choice of camera mount for the job. There are a number of different ways to get a camera into the air but it is fair to say that the days where a cameraman sat in an open door with a camera on his shoulder are largely gone…and rightly so.

Gyro-stabilised gimbal mounts
These are the Rolls-Royce of the aerial filming world – they can be nose or side mounted, they will provide a rock-steady shot at full zoom, and can pan and tilt through wide ranges. Operated from a laptop controller inside the helicopter these systems provide fantastic value to the production.
 

FLIR

CINEFLEX
 

Sidemounts
Ironically, the gimbal mounts can be too stable for some shots, particularly high speed sports, car commercials and so on. Millions of dollars of development money has gone into preventing you from going “Dutch” if you want to! The sidemount provides a balanced arm to take the camera’s weight and the cameraman, sitting within the mount operates the camera from two pistol grips. With the aircraft door off and his feet out of the aircraft this mount is for the hardy during the winter but with an experienced cameraman excellent results can be achieved.

Nosemounts
Fixed forward looking mounts, these are for quite special purposes. The camera will tilt but not usually pan and the lens is usually fixed.

Shoulder-Held
The way it used to be done! Difficult, uncomfortable and challenging for both cameraman and pilot. Not for nothing is this method referred to as ‘wobblycam’. But cheap.