Kenyon KS-4 Gyro Stabilizer
Blurred pictures are the worst nightmare for every professional photographer
Everybody will answer now… okay, and where are the news?
I want to dwell on this subject because I believe its one of the major problems of photography nowadays. 100 years ago nobody would even think about to make handheld pictures. And because that was fact, all of this very old black and white captures are famous for their extraordinary quality.
Looking at my own pictures from just 20 years ago filled my eyes with tears. Yes, I knew about the existence from tripods at that time, but to be honest, I never thought about buying one. Formerly a new wide angle lens or a simple flash was much more important for me. But now, after many years of photographing a sturdy tripod would have been my first choice instead of any other useless equipment. Not that all my pictures were blurred, but most of them are not 100% sharp, and that’s really annoying.
But if you think that this problem occurs only to young unskilled photographers you are wrong.
Nowadays the situation concerning the quality from digital images takes a turn for the worse. Nearly everything is controlled by metering, white balance settings, vibration reduction systems, various programs, high Iso settings and exposure modes. My feeling is that some Camera manufactures want to make us costumers believe that there is no need for a sturdy tripod any more. Since nearly every small Point and shoot camera has an optical/software stabilizing system which tries to compensate the trepidation from our hands everybody should ought to consider that this can never substitute a tripod.
Those stabilizers work great when the lighting conditions are good and the photographer uses both hands for the capture. But lets be honest, who is still using both hands when taking pictures? I observed in recent years that most of the young photographers are shooting their pictures like putting forth one’s hand, and if the camera is lucky the “photographer” stopped walking while shooting ;-)
But please don’t get me wrong, I understand the reason well why everybody does it this way. When holding the camera about 40cm away from the face its easy to check in the small monitor what will be recorded from the camera. And because most of those cameras do have a life preview this way is just perfect to compose the later on captured image. But the benefit of easy composing doesn’t come without a drawback. The penalty for this foolishness is the blurred picture. And if a picture is blurred nothing helps to get it sharp.
No program and no software tool can make it unblurred afterwards.
But all what I wrote until now is not really new.
Every photographer has figured that out by himself and knows what to do. You must use a sturdy tripod like 100 years ago. That’s the only way to avoid blurred pictures. Okay, so far so good, but not every situation allowed us to use our tripods. There are always situations where the usage of a tripod is not allowed or its simple impossible to use it.
There are numerous examples of it, like:
Shooting from any kind of moving vehicles including bicycles, motorbikes, cars, aircrafts, balloons, powerboats, helicopters, and so on….
All of these described situations make it impossible to get high quality unblurred pictures. But not only in these particular cases are requiring our full concentration. Every ordinary sunset remembers us that our tripod should not lay at home on the desk.
Today there are other restrictive factors in the ever-changing world regarding to us photographers. One of them is the ban on tripods in museums or at archaeological excavations. What was allowed for many years is now prohibited and we can’t amend it, but… and here we come slowly to the point….
there is a solution for the blur problem.
The Kenyon KS-4 Gyro Stabilizer from the Kenyon Laboratories LLC.
Never heard about?
If you ask Google you won't find many information’s about this amazing product. The KS-4 Gyro-Kit I am using isn’t that big and looks like a hand grenade (an egg-shaped object) and is about 4.5 inches (11,43cm) long with an 2.8 inches (7,11cm) diameter and 2,16 lbs (0,91kg) heavy. That’s not really small concerning to all the new slim point and shoot cameras, but after talking to Bobbie Kenyon I understood that the own weight of the Gyro is the critical factor relating to the weight of the camera/lens combination which should be stabilized.
That means that the most important question before buying stuff like this is:
Which camera-lens combination will be used most of the time and how heavy is it over-all? In my case it’s the Nikon D2xs DSLR Body together with the Nikkor DX AF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 lens plus a 77mm Protection filter (1,183+0,755+0,050=1,988kg) with a total weight of 4,37 lbs (1,988kg). This is within the maximum weight which can be stabilized with the KS-4 Gyro (up to 4lbs= 1,82kg). And in my mind the only reasonable combination because of the total over-all weight from 6,3 lbs (3kg)!
For sure its possible to think about some other combination like the Nikon D2xs plus a tele-zoom lens like the Nikkor AF-S VR 70-200mm f/2.8 (3,23lbs =2,703kg) plus the KS-6 Gyro (3,26lbs = 1,48kg). But don’t forget that you should never lose sight of the total weight from the Gyro/Camera/Lens combination which must be handheld all the time!!! In this special case its more then 9 pounds already (9,09lbs= 4,13kg). And believe me, it doesn’t help that the KS-6 Gyro Stabilizer is able to stabilize objects as heavy as 6lbs (2,73kg), if you can’t adjust it freehand for more then a minute or so.
Now we know about the possible camera/lens combinations. But how does this magical thing work? Can it be true that we can receive crispy sharp images without using a tripod?
The answer is YES.
The system works simply perfect if the owner respects some important rules which are perfectly described in the manual from Kenyon Laboratories.
to be continued soon.....